Hammering square methodological pegs into round results you are seeking holes is not limited to climate science.

CSI Myths: The Shaky Science Behind ForensicsForensic science was not developed by scientists. It was mostly created by cops, who were guided by little more than common sense. And as hundreds of criminal cases begin to unravel, many established forensic practices are coming under fire. PM takes an in-depth look at the shaky science that has put innocent people behind bars.By Brad ReaganPublished in the August 2009 issue.

(Photograph by Christopher Griffith; styling by Megan Caponetto)

On Jan. 11, 1992, the jury in the murder trial of Roy Brown heard from a dentist named Edward Mofson. To establish his credentials, Dr. Mofson testified that he was certified in forensic odontology, belonged to six related professional organizations and did forensic consulting throughout New York state. He then explained that several months earlier he was called to the morgue in Cayuga County, New York, to analyze the body of 49-year-old Sabina Kulakowski.

ALSO SEE:• PLUS: The Truth About Four Common Forensics Methods

Kulakowski’s corpse was found by a volunteer firefighter on a dirt road some 300 yards from the farmhouse where she lived, which had burned to the ground in the night. She was severely beaten and stabbed, and there were multiple bite marks on her body. Brown was a natural suspect in the grisly murder. The week before the crime, the hard-drinking 31-year-old had been released from jail on charges of threatening to “wipe everybody out” at the social services office where Kulakowski worked; the agency had put his daughter into foster care. In addition to the motive, the district attorney at trial produced other circumstantial evidence, including testimony from Brown’s two ex-wives that he had bitten them. But Mofson, now deceased, was the centerpiece of the prosecution.

Mofson testified that seven bite marks found on Kulakowski were “entirely consistent” with dental impressions taken from Brown. It was the only physical evidence tying Brown to the crime. Although a defense expert disputed Mofson’s findings, the jury convicted Brown of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

As the years ticked by, few listened as Brown proclaimed his innocence from his cell in the Elmira Correctional Facility. Then Brown got an unusual lucky break. His stepfather’s house burned down, taking with it all of his records from the trial. To replace his documents, Brown submitted an open records request to the county. The sheriff who processed Brown’s request mistakenly sent him the entire investigative file. It revealed another suspect: Barry Bench, the firefighter who discovered Kulakowski’s body. Bench’s brother had dated Kulakowski up until two months before the murder and Bench was reportedly upset that she continued to live in the family farmhouse. On the day before Christmas in 2003, Brown sent a letter to Bench letting him know he was seeking DNA testing. “Juries can make mistakes,” he wrote. But, “DNA is God’s creation, and God makes no mistakes.” Soon after receiving the message, Bench committed suicide by jumping in front of an Amtrak train. DNA tests confirmed that Bench was guilty of Kulakowski’s murder, and Brown was set free.

The faulty identification that sent Brown to prison for 15 years may seem like a rare glitch in the U.S. criminal justice system. It wasn’t. As DNA testing has made it possible to re-examine biological evidence from past trials, more than 200 people have had their convictions overturned. In approximately 50 percent of those cases, bad forensic analysis contributed to their imprisonment.

On television and in the movies, forensic examiners unravel difficult cases with a combination of scientific acumen, cutting-edge technology and dogged persistence. The gee-whiz wonder of it all has spawned its own media-age legal phenomenon known as the “CSI effect.” Jurors routinely afford confident scientific experts an almost mythic infallibility because they evoke the bold characters from crime dramas. The real world of forensic science, however, is far different. America’s forensic labs are overburdened, understaffed and under intense pressure from prosecutors to produce results. According to a 2005 study by the Department of Justice, the average lab has a backlog of 401 requests for services. Plus, several state and city forensic departments have been racked by scandals involving mishandled evidence and outright fraud.

But criminal forensics has a deeper problem of basic validity. Bite marks, blood-splatter patterns, ballistics, and hair, fiber and handwriting analysis sound compelling in the courtroom, but much of the “science” behind forensic science rests on surprisingly shaky foundations. Many well-established forms of evidence are the product of highly subjective analysis by people with minimal credentials—according to the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, no advanced degree is required for a career in forensics. And even the most experienced and respected professionals can come to inaccurate conclusions, because the body of research behind the majority of the forensic sciences is incomplete, and the established methodologies are often inexact. “There is no scientific foundation for it,” says Arizona State University law professor Michael Saks. “As you begin to unpack it you find it’s a lot of loosey-goosey stuff.”

Not surprisingly, a movement to reform the way forensics is done in the U.S. is gaining momentum. The call for change has been fueled by some embarrassing failures, even at the highest levels of law enforcement. After the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, the FBI arrested Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield and kept him in jail for two weeks. His incarceration was based on a purported fingerprint match to a print found on a bag of detonators discovered near the scene of the crime. As a later investigation by the Justice Department revealed, the FBI’s fingerprint-analysis software never actually matched Mayfield to the suspect fingerprint, but produced him as an “unusually close nonmatch.” Lacking any statistical context for how rare such similarities are, investigators quickly convinced themselves that Mayfield was the prime suspect.

The next year, 2005, Congress commissioned the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to examine the state of forensics in U.S. law enforcement. The result was a blistering report that came out this February, noting “serious deficiencies” in the nation’s forensic science system and advocating extensive reforms. It specifically noted that apart from DNA, there is not a single forensic discipline that has been proven “with a high degree of certainty” to be able to match a piece of evidence to a suspect. The obvious implication is the sobering possibility that more Roy Browns are currently locked up based on shoddy science. Then there’s the flip side: A lot of bad guys who should be in prison still roam free. A study by the Innocence Project of the prisoners exonerated by DNA found that the real perpetrators were identified in 103 cases—roughly half. In all but one, the perpetrator committed at least one serious crime after the innocent person was jailed.

Because of misleading forensic evidence, Roy Brown spent nearly a third of his life in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. (Photograph by Tyler Hicks)

The scientific method is instrumental to our understanding of the physical world. To scientists, the process is sacrosanct: Research your topic, generate a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, analyze your data and then publish the results for peer review. Forensic science, however, was not developed by scientists. It was created by cops—often guided by little more than common sense—looking for reliable ways to match patterns from clues with evidence tied to suspects. What research has been done understandably focuses on finding new techniques for putting criminals in jail.

ALSO SEE:• PLUS: The Truth About Four Common Forensics Methods

In the academic community the legal sciences get a comparative trickle of federal funding. In 2007, the National Institute of Justice awarded 21 grants for forensic research (excluding DNA) totaling $6.6 million; the National Institutes of Health awarded 37,275 grants totaling $15 billion. And without a wealth of statistically defensible research to back up their evidence, forensic examiners generally rely upon their own intuition and the experience of their colleagues. “You can’t take a few case studies and say, ‘Oh, it worked on these people; it must be reliable,’” says Karen Kafadar, an Indiana University statistics professor and a member of the NAS committee. “That is hardly a placebo-controlled, double-blind randomized trial.”

The FBI’s errors in the Madrid bombing case were particularly surprising because they called into question one of the gold standards of evidence—fingerprints. In recent years, legal experts have become deeply concerned about the accuracy of the “friction ridge analysis” central to fingerprint identification. Fingerprints are believed to be unique, but the process of matching prints has no statistically valid model. And forensic examiners are often working in an imperfect world, where prints taken in a police station on an ink pad are compared to prints left at a crime scene, which may be smudged or partially captured. Yet, as University of California–Los Angeles law professor Jennifer Mnookin has written, “fingerprint examiners typically testify in the language of absolute certainty.”

A 2006 study by the University of Southampton in England asked six veteran fingerprint examiners to study prints taken from actual criminal cases. The experts were not told that they had previously examined the same prints. The researchers’ goal was to determine if contextual information—for example, some prints included a notation that the suspect had already confessed—would affect the results. But the experiment revealed a far more serious problem: The analyses of fingerprint examiners were often inconsistent regardless of context. Only two of the six experts reached the same conclusions on second examination as they had on the first.

Ballistics has similar flaws. A subsection of tool-mark analysis, ballistics matching is predicated on the theory that when a bullet is fired, unique marks are left on the slug by the barrel of the gun. Consequently, two bullets fired from the same gun should bear the identical marks. Yet there are no accepted standards for what constitutes a match between bullets. Juries are left to trust expert witnesses. “‘I know it when I see it’ is often an acceptable response,” says Adina Schwartz, a law professor and ballistics expert with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Techniques that grew out of organic chemistry and microbiology have a strong scientific foundation. For example, chromatography, a method for separating complex mixtures, enables examiners to identify chemical substances in bodily fluids—evidence vital to many drug cases. The evolution of DNA analysis, in particular, has set a new scientific standard for forensic evidence. But it also demonstrates that good science takes time.

ALSO SEE:• PLUS: The Truth About Four Common Forensics Methods

The double-helix structure of DNA was discovered in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until 30 years later that sample analysis became sophisticated enough for positive ID. In 1987, a serial rapist by the name of Tommie Lee Andrews was the first person convicted in the U.S. using DNA. Nevertheless, for several years scientists continued to research and debate what constitutes a satisfactory match. The resulting process is broadly accepted and quantifiable (when using the most advanced analysis, there is a one in more than a quadrillion chance of a random match of two strangers’ nuclear DNA).

But DNA constitutes less than 10 percent of the case load at U.S. crime labs. The goal going forward, everyone agrees, is to make the rest of forensics more rigorous and statistically grounded. Promising work is already being done: Sargur Srihari, a pattern-recognition expert with the State University of New York at Buffalo, is developing software to help quantify the certainty of fingerprint matches. And, Nicholas Petraco, a chemist and mathematician at John Jay, is working on a database of microscopic tool marks to give statistical significance to the identification of burglars’ tools.

The NAS report recommends the establishment of an independent entity—a National Institute of Forensic Science—which would be the central authority responsible for funding research as well as creating and promulgating the standards of evidence and certification for experts. If such a system worked properly, juries would only hear from experts who are certified in their fields and examiners who work in accredited laboratories.

It’s likely that the microscope of serious scientific scrutiny will turn disciplines such as fingerprint and ballistics analysis, which have long histories and large sample sizes, into stronger standards of evidence. But many other forensic disciplines may be classified as far less sound. Bite marks, footprints, tire tracks, handwriting, bloodstain patterns and other forms of analysis that suffer from multiple confounding variables could end up being used as exclusionary evidence or as qualified supporting evidence only. Some types of evidence may be completely discredited. That’s what happened with voiceprint analysis and lead analysis of bullets, which were popular forensic techniques until studies showed significant error rates.

Within the forensic community, the reaction to the mounting criticism is mixed. Some are offended and blame the “propaganda” of defense attorneys and the snobbery of academics. Dean Gialamas, president of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, says most techniques have “a strong foundation in science” even if they have not been subject to the type of applied research needed to satisfy critics. And he notes that his organization has long advocated more standardization and stronger ethics rules, so hired guns can’t pollute courtrooms with biased testimony. At the end of the day, Gialamas and most other forensic experts say they are confident their methods will ultimately be validated by further research. Even critics of the current system say forensics should remain a critical part of law enforcement. “Let’s just give it to people as completely and honestly as we possibly can,” Saks says.

It will take years to fully reconcile the rigors of the scientific method with the needs and processes of the judicial system. But in the meantime, questionable forensic science will continue to tip the scales of justice. And when bad decisions are made in the courtroom, an innocent person’s entire life can be swept right out from under him. It happened to Steven Barnes 20 years ago. Then 23 years old, he was brought to trial for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl. He had never been arrested before and was confident he’d be cleared. Yet he watched as forensics expert Elaine Pagliaro testified that two hairs found in Barnes’s pickup were microscopically similar to the victim’s. Pagliaro also noted that soil samples taken from the truck were consistent with dirt from the crime scene and even that a distinctive pattern from the victim’s jeans was similar to an imprint left on the truck.

Due largely to her testimony, Barnes was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Last year, he was cleared by DNA and released. He’d never been on the Internet or used a cellular phone, and his girlfriend, who initially stuck by him after he went to prison, had long ago married another man. Barnes told Popular Mechanics that he works hard not to be overwhelmed by bitterness, even toward the jurors. “They must have thought, ‘[Pagliaro] knows what she is talking about.’”

Pagliaro, a veteran analyst with the Connecticut State Police, has recently co-authored a book called The Real World of a Forensic Scientist. “I think this scrutiny is actually good,” she says. “It’s important for the public to have a realistic expectation of what the science can do.” As for the Barnes case, there is no suggestion of impropriety regarding her testimony, but none of the evidence she presented was based on statistically validated science. “You feel awful someone spent all that time in jail,” she says. “All you can do is look back and say, ‘Was that the best we could do?’”

To those who say "Deniers" do so for the money, how much bias do you think 79 billion will buy?

New Study Shows How Government Dollars Perpetuate The Global Warming Hoax

Sometimes money creates a "self fulfilling prophecy," especially government money. Researchers know that if they come up with the right kind of information the grants will roll over from year to year.

Such has been the case with the global warming hoax. Government dollars have encouraged scientists to get the right data, instead of getting the data right. That's one of the reasons we continue to find mistakes in the data predicting a man-made global warming crisis.

In fact new study published by Science and Public Policy shows that:

The US government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.Despite the billions: “audits” of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.

Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks are calling for more carbon-trading. And experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 - $10 trillion making carbon the largest single commodity traded.

Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.

The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into one theory, have we inadvertently created a self-fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation?

Its not necessarily some sort of back room conspiracy, leading to the bogus conclusions about climate change, it is the fact that most of the funding has been to prove that man is the cause of global warming.When all of the funding is on one side, all of the results are on that one side:

Billions in the Name of “Climate”In total, over the last 20 years, by the end of fiscal year 2009, the US government will have poured in $32 billion for climate research—and another $36 billion for development of climate-related technologies. These are actual dollars, obtained from government reports, and not adjusted for inflation. It does not include funding from other governments. The real total can only grow.

In 1989, the first specific US climate-related agency was created with an annual budget of $134 million. Today in various forms the funding has leapt to over $7,000 million per annum, around 50 fold higher. Tax concessions add to this. (See below for details and sources.)..after spending $30 billion on pure science research no one is able to point to a single piece of empirical evidence…This tally is climbing precipitously. With enormous tax breaks and rescue funds now in play, it’s difficult to know just how far over the $7 billion mark the final total will stand for fiscal year 2009. For example, additional funding for carbon sequestration experiments alone amounted to $3.4 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (not included in the $7 billion total above).

The most telling point is that after spending $30 billion on pure science research no one is able to point to a single piece of empirical evidence that man-made carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the global climate.

If carbon is a minor player in the global climate as the lack of evidence suggests, the“Climate Change Science Program” (CCSP), “Climate Change Technology Program” (CCTP), and some of the green incentives and tax breaks would have less, little, or no reason to exist. While forecasting the weather and climate is critical, and there are other good reasons to develop alternative energy sources—no one can argue that the thousands of players who received these billions of dollars have any real incentive to “announce” the discovery of the insignificance of carbon’s role.

…“Thousands of scientists have been funded to find a connection between human carbon emissions and the climate. Hardly any have been funded to find the opposite. Throw 30 billion dollars at one question and how could bright, dedicated people not find 800 pages worth of connections, links, predictions, projections and scenarios? (What’s amazing is what they haven’t found: empirical evidence.)”By setting up trading networks, tax concessions, and international bureaucracies before the evidence was in, have we ensured that our understanding of the role of carbon in climate science would be sped up, but that our knowledge of every other aspect of climate science would be slowed down to an equal and opposite extent?Monopolistic funding creates a ratchet effect where pro-AGW findings are reported and repeated, while anti-AGW results lie unstudied and ignored.Monopolistic funding creates a ratchet effect where even the most insignificant pro-AGW findings are reported, repeated, trumpeted and asserted, while any anti-AGW results lie unstudied, ignored and delayed. Auditing AGW research is so underfunded that for the most part it is left to unpaid bloggers who collect donations from concerned citizens online. These auditors, often retired scientists, are providing a valuable free service to society, and yet, in return they are attacked, abused, and insulted.

The truth will come out in the end, but how much damage will accrue while we wait for volunteers to audit the claims of the financially well-fed?

The stealthy mass entry of bankers and traders into the background of the scientific “debate” poses grave threats to the scientific process. The promise of “trillions of dollars” on commodity markets—with all of that potential money hinging on finding that human emissions of carbon dioxide have a significant role in the climate—surely acts like blanket of mud over open dispassionate analysis.

All of this means we must be extra diligent in only focusing on just the evidence, the science, the empirical data. Illogic and unreason cloud a debate already loaded with bias. When there are so many incentives encouraging unclarity and overcomplexity, the simple truths need help to rise to the top. But who funds the counter-PR campaign—now that even Exxon has been howled out of the theater of science. There is hardly any money promoting Natural Causes of Climate Change, while billions upon trillions promote Unnatural Forces.

In this scientific debate, one side is gagged while the other side has a government-funded media campaign.The bottom lineEven if monopolistic funding has affected science, the total amount of money paid to each side won’t tell us whether The Planet’s climate is warming or whether that warming is due to carbon-dioxide. The point of this report is to show how the process of science can be distorted (like any human endeavor) by a massive one-sided input of money. What use would money be, if it didn’t have some impact?

The massive amounts of money involved only makes it more imperative that we look hard at the empirical evidence.

By Jim GuirardThe Global Warming Movement (AGW) has taken on the worrisome attributes of a pseudo-religious cult, which operates far more on the basis of an apocalyptic "belief" system than on objective climate science.

Since this worldwide Movement and its strident policies of Less Energy at Higher Prices (in order to achieve reductions in everyone's "carbon footprint") are at the heart of America's enormous energy shortfall, it poses a national security threat of major proportions.

And in this context, the AGW Crusade should be understood in a "Know Thy Enemy" frame of reference -- perhaps not in terms of a fully conscious or intentional enemy of the American people at a time of war and economic crisis but as a deadly threat to our economic stability and national security, nonetheless.

Kingdom of the Cults

Here, therefore, in far more detail than any routine allegation of "cultism" conveys, are no fewer than ten of this AGW ideology's very specific characteristics, many of whose roots and lock-step influences can be found in Walter Martin's and Ravi Zacharias' definitive, award-winning 2003 book, "Kingdom of the Cults:"

1. Leadership by a self-glorifying, manipulative New Age Prophet -- in this case, former Vice-President Al Gore, though he is rapidly being supplanted by President Barack Obama.

2. Assertion of an apocalyptic threat to all mankind.

3. An absolutist definition of both the threat and the proposed solution(s).

4. Promise of a salvation from this pending apocalypse.

5. Devotion to an inspired text which (arguendo) embodies all the answers -- in this case, Prophet Gore's pseudo-scientific book "Earth in the Balance" and his more recent "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary.

6. A specific list of "truths" (see the Ten Commandments listed below) which must be embraced and proselytized by all Cult members..

7. An absolute intolerance of any deviation from any of these truths by any Cult member.

8. A strident intolerance of any outside criticism of the Cult's definition of the problem or of its proposed solutions.

9. A "Heaven-on-Earth" vision of the results of the mission's success and/or a "Hell-on-Earth" result if the cultic mission should fail.

10. An inordinate fear (and an outright rejection of the possibility) of being proven wrong in either the apocalyptic vision or the proposed salvation.

Prophet Gore's (and now Prophet Obama's) Ten Commandments

With this half of the AGW Cult's self-definition now clearly established, here is the other half -- its Ten Commandments of "Thou-Shalt" and "Thou-Shalt-Not" absolutes -- designed for keeping its devoted cultists in lockstep support and its intimidated detractors in retreat:

Finally, since this AGW juggernaut seems to have brainwashed a majority of Americans, most of the media and academia, a majority of the Congress and even many churches into a mind-set of support for its pseudo-religious scam, a recent Wall Street Journal's recent conclusion that this represents a "Mass Neurosis" of a cultic nature seems alarmingly accurate.

Truths to be Ignored or Denied

On the more climatically correct side, all that is needed to begin the collapse of this house-of-cards scam is yet another list of certifiable facts and truths -- one which will disprove much of the Cult's mission, tactics and alleged "solutions" -- namely,

(a) the fact that while Arctic ice may (or may not, of late) be receding, Antarctic ice has been increasing for about 40 years

(b) the fact that global temperatures have been on a slightly decreasing trend since 1998,

(c) the fact that Mars (which features no man-made factor at all) is experiencing "global warming," as well,

(d) the fact that Antarctic "ice shelves" which occasionally break off, float away and melt at sea, do not raise ocean levels at all,

(e) the fact that several of the "hottest years" on record were in the 1930s and 1940s, when CO2 levels were much lower than today's,

(f) the fact that ever more scientists assert convincingly that atmospheric CO2 is a lagging consequence, rather than a triggering cause, of alleged global warming,

(g) the fact that all earlier glacial and inter-glacial periods were clearly caused not by man but by solar, ocean and volcanic cycles and "natural" fluctuations,

(h) the fact that di-hydrogen oxide (H2O) molecules -- water vapor -- and methane molecules are 20-30 times more heat-retentive than CO2 molecules are,

(i) the fact that termites worldwide expel about as much "greenhouse gasses" into the atmosphere as does all the burning of fossil fuels by human beings,

(j) the fact that even if all Kyoto-type limits on CO2 were obeyed by all nations, the estimated net impact by 2050 would be less than half a degree F -- with a ruinous cost-to-benefit ratio of thousands to one, when the standard requirement is no more than one to one.

Conclusion: Since every such Prophet-led, scare-mongering, pseudo-religious conspiracy needs a properly descriptive name, and since this one's primary concerns over alleged depletion of the so-called "ozone layer" over Antarctica have shifted to a panic over CO2, instead, a fitting name for this cultic gaggle might be the "Branch Carbonian Cult" --

o "Branch" because it is a radical offshoot from the main body of science-based environmentalism;

o "Carbonian" because of its professed fear of carbon dioxide as a primary cause of AGW; and

o "Cult" because of its self-evident structure and practices -- which are in full accord with most elements of the typical religious cult, Branch Davidian or otherwise.

Imagine we have gone to a movie made by a former politician (who is not a scientist). In the movie we are informed (1) the earth is warming exponentially. (2) Human beings have been and will continue to cause this warming because we release a natural gas (CO2) into the atmosphere. (3) There will be catastrophic consequences from the exponential warming that will occur as a result of this release of CO2. (According to the movie the planet's icecaps will melt, polar bears will die, and cities will disappear under water.) (4) To prevent these disasters radical changes are required to reduce the amount of man-made CO2 that is being released. (5) Draconian control of carbon dioxide output must be instituted by all governments of the world both by unilateral legislation limiting the use of fossil fuels and by tightly written treaties that further force the signatory countries to reduce their "carbon footprint."

We're in a dire situation -- or so we have been told. To review, the catastrophes, and their solutions, are composed of these five (more or less) basic steps:(1) The planet is getting exponentially warmer; (2) this exponential warming is caused by man-made releases of CO2; (3) because of the exponential warming, man-made CO2 releases are causing and will continue to cause unprecedented worldwide calamities; (4) to prevent these cataclysms man-made CO2 emissions must be immediately and dramatically reduced; and (5) the situation is so serious that individual nations must swiftly pass strict laws controlling CO2 emissions and international treaties must be quickly signed that insure that all countries are required to reduce their CO2emissions.

There are some philosophical problems that need to be ironed out before we take such arguments, and such movies, seriously: first, all of that catastrophic world-melting logic presented in the movie is based on induction. For example, the only way to conclude that the whole world is getting generally exponentially warmer is to foster the conclusion by taking lots and lots of specific measurements of exponentially higher and higher temperatures over time. (This also means that argument number (1) -- like all the other arguments in the movie -- is an argument of probability.)

Furthermore, all five of the steps I have outlined above are based on what is known as sequential conditional logic.[ii] This means, put as simply as possible, that if any of the first four steps is false then the remainder of the arguments (or argument) that follow the first step found to be false are (or is) also false.[iii] (This may seem counterintuitive - but think it through. Go through each step, assume a step is false and then see if you can prove as true any of the others steps after the step found to be false.)

What this kind of conditional thinking means is that we jump from one "possible world" to another - but the very existence of each new "world" depends upon the existence of the "possible world" that preceded it -- otherwise we jump into a void. For example in our movie:

(1) The planet is getting exponentially warmer. This is only a possibility. So we are talking about a percentage of warming in a possible world -- not necessarily our real world. (No one knows the exact temperature of the real world. In fact, there is no such thing as an exact world temperature. Temperatures vary throughout the planet.)

(2) This warming is caused by man-made releases of CO2. This is also only a possibility. So, we are talking about an approximate amount of CO2 in a possible world -- not the actual amount in our real world. (No one knows the exact amount of CO2 being released in the real world.)

The exact same logic is true for steps 3, 4, and 5. All of the logic is inductive; all of the arguments are based on probability. If the conclusion (#5) is true, all of the previous arguments must also be true.

And, as anyone who studies induction knows: the longer the string of conditionals (steps), the lower the probability that the entire set of conditionals is true.

Let's take a look at the math and then at the probability that arguments (1) through (5) are true.[iv] First I will show how the math works. Then we will try to run some probability numbers for the five arguments we saw above. (Remember this science is admitted, by all sides involved, to be based on inductive logic, hence it is impossible that any of the five arguments are 100% true.)

Here is how the basic math works: let's look at roulette wheel -- it is an easy example to understand. If I only have one dollar and I bet that dollar (and continue to bet all my winnings if I have any winnings after each bet) on red five times in a row, what is the possibility of me having any money after my fifth bet? (Remember, we are talking about truth in terms of probability, so another way of saying this is how true is it that I will win all five of my bets (= arguments) and have some money (= truth) at the end of my five bets?)

The probability of winning by betting on red on a standard American Roulette wheel is 47.37% each time - if I bet once. If I bet five times in a row the chances of my winning all five times is: 2.38%. That is the correct number.[v] If I extend my bet five times in a row the truth of the possibility of me winning every time (expressed in terms of probability) drops to less than three percent.

We can now try to stick some numbers to those five arguments we saw above.

(1) The world is getting exponentially warmer. The key word here is exponentially. I didn't say it and I don't believe it -- but proponents of global warming do. Here is their very famous "hockey stick" graph.

But, oops, here is a NASA graph that shows that nothing remotely resembling exponential warming has been going on in at least the last ten years.

Let's be very, very generous and give argument (1) -- that the world is exponentially heating -- a 75% possibility.

Argument (2) humans cause warming by emitting CO2. We do? The fact is that we emit around 3% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year.[vi] So what is the number that expresses the possibility that we are causing global warming? I would say 3% -- but that would make a lot of Warmageddoners angry. I will be generous. Even though we only release 3% of the CO2, let's take 50% of the blame.

Argument (3) that global warming is causing worldwide calamities seems, honestly, like a bad joke to me. Hurricanes were predicted to run rampant. They haven't. Polar bears were all going to die. They are doing just fine. No cities are sinking beneath the seas. None of the gloom and doom from the movie has taken place -- at least not on the consistent and rapidly increasing level that was predicted. Sorry, Warmageddoners but sane people just can't buy this part of the argument. I give it 20% -- and that is way too indulgent.

Argument (4) to prevent the disasters CO2 must be decreased. As I said, I am not seeing any disasters. But maybe it would just be nice not to have so much CO2 in the atmosphere. So, for aesthetic reasons alone, I give argument (4) 75%.

We have come to our final argument: (5) that the governments of the world are going to lower CO2 emissions by fiat and by treaty. It is hard for me to believe that rational people even offer this argument. If the Kyoto treaty is any indication, governments have been all talk and no action when it comes to actually lowering the levels of CO2 emitted by human beings into the atmosphere. As I have written elsewhere, governments are just not good at keeping promises and at creating something from nothing.

What is the chance that all of the governments of the world will unite to significantly lower emissions of CO2? A rational person would have to put the probability at close to zero. But I am bending over backwards here -- so I give it another 50%.

Given these lavish percentages what is the probability that the scenario laid out in the global warming scare is true?[vii] Ready for the answer: 2.8%.[viii] True Warmageddoners can even raise the probability of all five arguments to 80%. The result is still only a 32.7% possibility that Al Gore is right. That is a long way from being 100% true.

If I ran America, I would not bet the future of our economy on the successful outcome the proposed cap and trade legislation. The odds are against it.

Larrey Anderson is a writer, a philosopher, and submissions editor for American Thinker. He is the author of The Order of the Beloved, and the new memoir, Underground: Life and Survival in the Russian Black Market.

Inductive reasoning always involves possibility. It moves from the particular facts to a general conclusion based on the number of occurrences of the particular facts. (The greater the number of particular occurrences of particular facts, the higher the probability that the general conclusion derived from those facts is true. In inductive logic the conclusion can never be 100% certain.) I have written about the problems of the claims of an exponential increase in the earth's temperature in several different places and will not discuss them in detail in this article.

[ii] There are several types of conditional logic, e.g., material, relevance, causal, indicative, etc. Rather than get into a debate on what specific kind of logic is in each of these steps, it is important for the reader to understand that every step of these conditionals (whatever the specific conditional logic of each individual step might be) must be met for the final conclusion (that governments must intervene to save the planet from global warming) is proven to be true. And since all of these arguments are based on probability, none of them can be absolutely proven. For example, anyone who asserts that #1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 in the sequence of arguments is true really means (and can only mean) that #1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 is possible. The important question, and we will address it [in note viiii] below, is: How possible?

[iii] The argument can still be technically valid but it cannot be true. This is an esoteric (and somewhat contentious) point in logic and simply included here as CYA.

[iv] It should be crystal clear by now that none of the arguments numbered (1) - (5) are absolutely true or absolutely false. They can't be. Logic and science don't work that way. They are either probably true or probably false. We will try to determine how probably true as we proceed.

[v] The math is .4737 ^5 or 47.37% times itself 5 times.

[vi] This 3% is an approximation based on yet another string of inductions -- because that is how this science works.

[vii] For the record, I don't think any of these five arguments rates more than a 10% probability of being true. So my own conclusion, giving each argument a solid 10%, is that there is a 0.001% chance that Al Gore is right about man made global warming.

An amusing piece of equivocation and double-talk suggesting that though things are cooling now, it's likely a precursor to warming later.

World's climate could cool first, warm later

17:56 04 September 2009 by Fred Pearce, GenevaFor similar stories, visit the Climate Change Topic GuideForecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.

"People will say this is global warming disappearing," he told more than 1500 of the world's top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UN's World Climate Conference.

"I am not one of the sceptics," insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. "However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it."

Few climate scientists go as far as Latif, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But more and more agree that the short-term prognosis for climate change is much less certain than once thought.

Nature vs humans

This is bad timing. The UN's World Meteorological Organization called the conference in order to draft a global plan for providing "climate services" to the world: that is, to deliver climate predictions useful to everyone from farmers worried about the next rainy season to doctors trying to predict malaria epidemics and builders of dams, roads and other infrastructure who need to assess the risk of floods and droughts 30 years hence.

But some of the climate scientists gathered in Geneva to discuss how this might be done admitted that, on such timescales, natural variability is at least as important as the long-term climate changes from global warming. "In many ways we know more about what will happen in the 2050s than next year," said Vicky Pope from the UK Met Office.

Cold Atlantic

Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase.

Latif said NAO cycles also explained the recent recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. James Murphy, head of climate prediction at the Met Office, agreed and linked the NAO to Indian monsoons, Atlantic hurricanes and sea ice in the Arctic. "The oceans are key to decadal natural variability," he said.

Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008.

In candid mood, climate scientists avoided blaming nature for their faltering predictions, however. "Model biases are also still a serious problem. We have a long way to go to get them right. They are hurting our forecasts," said Tim Stockdale of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK.

The world may badly want reliable forecasts of future climate. But such predictions are proving as elusive as the perfect weather forecast.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

Watching AGW evangelists abandon every scientific standard in their quest to further their unreasoned belief can certainly take some mind blowing turns.

The Dog Ate Global WarmingInterpreting climate data can be hard enough. What if some key data have been fiddled?

By Patrick J. Michaels

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”

Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.

So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.

Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.

Then the story changed. In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.

Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all, saying that there were “confidentiality” agreements regarding the data between CRU and nations that supplied the data. McIntyre’s blog readers then requested those agreements, country by country, but only a handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third World countries and written in very vague language.

It’s worth noting that McKitrick and I had published papers demonstrating that the quality of land-based records is so poor that the warming trend estimated since 1979 (the first year for which we could compare those records to independent data from satellites) may have been overestimated by 50 percent. Webster, who received the CRU data, published studies linking changes in hurricane patterns to warming (while others have found otherwise).

Enter the dog that ate global warming.

Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.

If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?

All of this is much more than an academic spat. It now appears likely that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions. Unlike a law, which can’t be challenged on a scientific basis, a regulation can. If there are no data, there’s no science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the answer to the question posed above.

Times: Inconvenient Truth About Cooling May Retard Efforts to Fight WarmingJONATHAN TOBIN - 09.23.2009 - 5:44 PMIn an article that might well have deserved publication in the Onion, the New York Times introduced a heretical notion to its readership today. Despite the fact that any skepticism about global warming and the responsibility of humanity for this rise in temperatures is now considered proof of insanity, the Times reported that it appears more than likely that “global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.”

This must come as quite a shock to an American public that has been relentlessly propagandized on this issue and convinced that the end of civilization as we know it is just around the corner. But facts are stubborn things, and for all the hoopla about “saving the planet,” now even the Times is prepared to admit that far from heating up at the exponential rates Al Gore has discussed to near universal applause, it appears that the story is a bit more complicated than he may have let on. Indeed, according to researchers from the British climate-change office and published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, temperatures have hardly budged since 1998 and may well continue to dip in the coming decade.

Does this explode the whole global-warming theory? I don’t know, and I’d venture to say neither do most scientists, let alone Times reporter Andrew C. Revkin, who wrote today’s story. But it is interesting to note that this not insignificant piece of intelligence is presented not as a startling challenge to the environmentalist orthodoxy on global warming but as a troubling development that will give skeptics about the threat more ammunition. As Revkin writes, “The recent stability of global temperatures makes regular appearances in blog postings disputing the reality of global warming and is frequently invoked by pundits who oppose the climate bill that passed the House this year and is pending in the Senate.”

The problem, according to Revkin’s story, is that it has been difficult to get people to “understand and respond to environmental problems” and that “the current temperature stability has created confusion and apathy.”

In other words, facts contrary to the accepted narrative about the apocalyptic threat of global warming have clouded the picture and could make it harder to enforce uniformity of belief on the subject as well as to ram through Congress legislation that has the potential to cripple our economy. Or at least they will unless discussion about this is framed solely in terms of how best to get people to ignore some truly inconvenient truths.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is petitioning the EPA to review their CO2 findings in that some of the data used to arrive at the current findings has been "lost" as revealed in the piece posted a couple entries above this one. PDF of the petition can be found here:

Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009―In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding.

In mid-August the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space. The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis. CRU’s destruction of data, however, severely undercuts the credibility of those studies.

In a declaration filed with CEI’s petition, Cato Institute scholar and climate scientist Patrick Michaels calls CRU’s revelation “a totally new element” that “violates basic scientific principles, and “throws even more doubt” on the claims of global warming alarmists.

CEI’s petition, filed late Monday with EPA, argues that CRU’s disclosure casts a new cloud of doubt on the science behind EPA’s proposal to regulate carbon dioxide. EPA stopped accepting public comments in late June but has not yet issued its final decision. As CEI’s petition argues, court rulings make it clear that agencies must consider new facts when those facts change the underlying issues.

CEI general counsel Sam Kazman stated, “EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data. But CRU’s suspicious destruction of its original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable. If EPA doesn’t reexamine the implications of this, it’s stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face.”

Among CRU’s funders are the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy – U.S. taxpayers.

> Read the CEI petition to the EPA.

> Read more about the data dump: The Dog Ate Global Warming, by Patrick J. Michaels.

Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Levels in Satellite EraFiled under: Antarctic, Climate Changes, Glaciers/Sea Ice, Polar —Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?

The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.

Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:

A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season.

It would seem that with oft-stoked fears of a disastrous sea level rise coming this century any news that perhaps some signs may not be pointing to its imminent arrival would be greeted by a huge sigh of relief from all inhabitants of earth (not only the low-lying ones, but also the high-living ones, respectively under threat from rising seas or rising energy costs).

But not a peep.

But such is not always the case—or rather, such is not ever the case when ice melt is pushing the other end of the record scale.

For instance, below is a collection of NASA stories highlighting record high amounts of melting (or in most cases, simply higher than normal amounts in some regions) across Greenland in each of the past 3 years, as ascertained by Marco Tedesco (the lead author of the latest report on Antarctica):

NASA Researcher Finds Days of Snow Melting on the Rise in Greenland

“In 2006, Greenland experienced more days of melting snow and at higher altitudes than average over the past 18 years, according to a new NASA-funded project using satellite observations….”

NASA Finds Greenland Snow Melting Hit Record High in High Places

“A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average. In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year over Greenland is the equivalent of more than twice the surface size of the U.S…”

And lest you think that perhaps NASA hasn’t had any data on ice melt across Antarctica in past years, we give you this one:

NASA Researchers Find Snowmelt in Antarctica Creeping Inland

“On the world’s coldest continent of Antarctica, the landscape is so vast and varied that only satellites can fully capture the extent of changes in the snow melting across its valleys, mountains, glaciers and ice shelves. In a new NASA study, researchers [including Marco Tedesco] using 20 years of data from space-based sensors have confirmed that Antarctic snow is melting farther inland from the coast over time, melting at higher altitudes than ever and increasingly melting on Antarctica’s largest ice shelf.”

But this time around, nothing, nada, zippo from NASA when their ice melt go-to guy Marco Tedesco reports that Antarctica has set a record for the lack of surface ice melt (even more interestingly coming on the heels of a near-record low ice-melt year last summer).

So, seriously, NASA, what gives? If ice melt is an important enough topic to warrant annual updates of the goings-on across Greenland, it is not important enough to elucidate the history and recent behavior across Antarctica?

(These are not meant as rhetorical questions)

Reference

Tedesco M., and A. J. Monaghan, 2009. An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18502, doi:10.1029/2009GL039186.

I have recently been challenged to an email debate by a socialist highschool government teacher. He challenged me to present Dr. level Climatologist presenting evidence opposing Global warming. I suspect many of the scientist opposing it are not climatologist. Who are the learned heavy hitters leading the charge refuting the global warming stampede? What are the most damming studies I could point in his direction? BBG ,and anyone else, any help would be much appreciated. This is one of those guys who is smug and flipant and if you could help take him down a notch you would make my month! If I find any good evidence Ill post it here. Compling a list of the people and evidence against in one place could be helpful.

Well first off, proving something doesn't exist ain't science as science involves stating a theory and then assembling the data to prove or disprove it. Proving a negative is a losing proposition, the person positing a theory has the responsibility to prove it--it's not your job to prove its antithesis--so my initial take is the challenge is framed in a manner that stacks the deck against you to begin with. As such as in any debate I'd start it by defining just what the topic is. If he's silly enough to say something like "AGW is indisputably occurring," well he's foolishnes as there is plenty of dispute.

Second, the planet might be warming, and humans may have something to do with that. The planetary proxies show the temp has been all over the map over the planet's 3 billion years, changes that clearly could not be caused by humans. So, if AGW does exist, it's likely an impact that has to be teased out of the always changing global climate. As such the question becomes "how does one tell the difference between AGW and the climate change always occurring? Make your guy spell this stuff out for you; I've seen very little beyond spurious models that have failed to predict current cooling, and single variable CO2 theories where CO2 concentrations lag behind heating trends rather than predict 'em that attempt to discern human caused v. "normal" climate change. Bottom line, don't make the mistake that the zealots do by claiming certainty that we haven't the tools or datasets to have an informed opinion about.

Indeed, third the complexity of the global environment is incredible, accurate measurements over geologically significant periods of time are scant, many of the tools used to collect data are barely out of their packing crates--satellite data has only been available since the '80s, for instance, and the quality of that data has changed significantly in those 30 years--while dataset that were foundational for much of the AGW panic are proving spurious (see above). How does one use small, spurious datasets collected by new tools that have changed greatly in their short service span to create meaningful forecasts within a system so complex major variable remain undefined when forecasts based on older proven tools focussed on problems of smaller scope and complexity regularly fail to provide accurate predictions?

Finally, there's no winning with True Believers of any stripe. AGW zealots are right up there with the god-put-the-dinosaur-bones-there-to-test-our-faith bible thumping knuckleheads. No amount of proof is gonna sway 'em, and in fact there is far more evidence supporting evolution than there is AGW, yet the anti-evos shout all comers down none the less. Moreover, a lot of these fools are not really interested in having an informed discussion and instead try to wrap you up in endless laps around the same track until you tire of the panic mongering psalms they sing. Unless you like beating your head against a wall, I'd point out this similarity early and often. Note here that taking an agnostic view on AGW puts you in a better position as you can be open to compelling argument, while your opponent is not.

Finally for resources I like quite a few such as:

http://www.climateaudit.org/This site does a great job of looking at specific elements of the data and debunking many claims. Hockey Stick source code errors were outed here, reporting station anomalies documented, and proxy data disputed, too.

Be aware that any random AGW zealot will respond to any source material by stating the author is somehow a tool of big oil or somesuch. If that occurs, research how much money in dumped into AGW research; if money drives the antis, surely it impacts the prow-AGW crowd, too.

Note also that perusing discussions around here under Environment and such will lead to a lot of interesting sources.

Freki, please post his arguments here as long as there is nothing confidential about wanting to save the planet. BBG has it right, proving something doesn't exist is a bit tough. Your first move IMO is to draw the allegations out of him and sampling scientists isn't science. For example, in the last 60 years - that should cover most of our lifetimes - how much is he alleging that the earth has warmed? (The answer is almost zero, maybe a half degree C and certainly within the margin of measurement sampling error.) If he doesn't like the time frame compare now with the 1930s, lol. And second, draw out from him what portion of that warming is caused by human CO2 emissions - that is the part they are trying to regulate and specifically how much is cased by each of the other top 5 or 10 causes. If he says that scientists have no idea, then you have met an honest man, lol. (Last time I looked into this I came up with numbers that human caused CO2 is about 2% of total CO2 production, warming from CO2 is about 2% of total warming and that total warming isn't more than about a tenth of a degree per decade. If he concedes anything at all resembling these numbers then I would concede to him that humans caused CO2 emissions are likely a 0.0004 contributor to the tenth of a degree warming that has plagued our planet, and that we should all be more careful - but not shut down our economic system.

For a control group, I would like to know what the greenhouse gas effect would be if 7 billion people on earth owned a horse and buggy and heated their home with firewood.

Seeking a "Doctor level climatologist" who doesn't do the AGW tango is about as likely to bear fruit as seeking a Bishop level atheist. Climatology is a new science, climatologists are a new breed of scientist, most of them products of an educational system that has had an inordinate amount of money injected into it with which to chase AGW boogymen so it's not particularly surprising that most toe the party line. Rigor is rigor regardless of degree path, however, and good science cares not one whit what kind of tam you wear or what sort of filigree your robe sports. You should avoid arguments that depend on appeals to authority, and focus instead on ones that speak to hard science regardless of pedigree.

There's a polymath who embodies this point, Lord Monkton, who has some brilliant pieces about this stuff, including:

What happened to global warming?By Paul Hudson Climate correspondent, BBC News This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

“ In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down ”According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

BbG I will post the emails as they develop. I need to go through the info you have given me and compose the first one. Stay tuned Here is the challenge:

On Global Warming.

I have done tons of research as well. Here is a challenge for you. Lets define Global warming -- it has two major premises. 1) The average temperature of the earth is rising. 2) Man is causing/contributing greatly to this.

When Newt Gingrich debated Al Gore on this topic he shocked everyone bysaying Premise 1 and 2 are true.

Your challenge.

Go out and look up any study you want on Global warming affirmingpremise #1 and #2 or Denying either premise. (For the record the deniersused to say "its all lies" now they say #1 is true but not #2 -- theyhave already flip-flopped on the first premise due to undeniableevidence.)

Of the people writing the articles saying man is not responsible findONE who has:A) A PhD in a relevant field - preferable in climate. B) Not being paid and dependant upon an energy company (Usually coal andoil)

You will find a few climatologists who are paid shills for the coalindustry who deny premise #2 and you will find a few independant PhD'swith degrees in math and petroleum engineering, but good luck finding anindependant climatologist with a PhD.

Ask brent about the Discover Institute -- they fund a ton of thesestudies have Bachelors degrees in Chemistry!!

In all my searches I have found 3 independant qualified scientist whosay premise #2 is not true.

Guess what % of PhD climatologists say premise #2 is true? Do youdare???

If you accidently come across the petition of scientists who thinkglobal warming is a hoax.. you already lost. (Hint: Homer Simpson is oneof the signatories)

As shown elsewhere in this thread, the earth appears to be currently cooling, which kinda does damage to premise one, and makes one question premise two. How are all the studies you speak to impacted by the current cooling? I know the party line is "cooling now will lead to greater warming down the line," but seeing how all the models over which so much hay has been made failed to predict the current cooling, why should any of that be believed?

Second, I work with a group of guerilla scientists very much like those at Climate Audit who do a lot of good, leading edge, top in the field science. When I started working with this group my creds amounted to a GED, wouldn't be surprised if some of my compatriots were high school dropouts, and there aren't a lot of advanced degrees among this group. But good science is good science and you don't need an advanced degree to produce experiments with replicable outcomes. Your focus on degrees plays into a logical fallacy called "appeal to authority." Alas, authorities get things wrong on a regular basis, while amateurs have a long history of making significant contributions. In short, the advance degree in specific field fetish doesn't advance any argument, and petitions signed or percentage within a field favoring an opinion don't count for all that much. Science is not a popularity contest.

Third, if "industry shills" produce science that is tainted by money that hence should be ignored, why doesn't that apply to the pro AGW side where hundreds of billions of dollars have been injected into research and careers established with said funds? When you start finding strident consensus in science, particularly in a science as young as climatology, red lights ought to be flashing. I can think of no other field where new theories are accepted with such unanimity, and that ought to be a red flag rather than a talking point. Be that as it may, financial interest is not a one way street here.

Finally, what datasets are these near unanimous pronouncements made from? Is it the hockey stick data made with the bad source code that had to be teased out as its authors would not share it (not sharing datasets and source info in science!!!)? Was it the European surface temp data which has since been declared lost (see above). Is it the US surface datasets that have been shown to be faulty? Is it the proxy data, some of which has been shown to be misinterpreted? Maybe systems as complex and uncharted in their interactions as the global climate aren't likely to be established to an incontrovertible degree in the 30 years climatology has been around, or maybe making unassailable pronouncements about narrow slices of the climate within its 3 billion year timeframe are the height of arrogance?

Bottom line, it looks to me like you've been sucked in to arguing dubious "facts" under dubious auspices. Hope you'll forgive me if I don't jump into the same.

I agree with all of what BBG wrote. I wrote previously that polling scientists is not science and would add that credential-checking scientists is also not science. Before all major breakthroughs in science, nearly all scientists agreed that the opposite was true.

If I were you I would ignore the side-fights of credentials and personalities, knowing that plenty of able and respected people will back you up, and as a first reply I would only ask to clarify what he is alleging.

"Man is causing/contributing greatly..." When they ask for more money at my daughter's school they say that ninety-some percent rate the school district as good or excellent. Well there is a BIG difference between good and excellent in the school business. Why do they lump those together? Obviously to skew a point and make good sound like excellent instead of like fair or mediocre or adequate. Obama's stimulus has "created or saved xx million jobs. How many did it create and how many did it save and why did they lump those together. Obviously to make an inference while making it impossible for you to refute what isn't even really alleged.

But your rival and the media of our time writes: "2) Man is causing/contributing greatly to this." What the hell does that mean?

----

I would only reply in the first inning with a clarification request:

"Lets define Global warming -- it has two major premises." - agree

"1) The average temperature of the earth is rising." - Let's clarify so we know what we are agreeing on here. What is the rise (very exact or within a specific range) since say the middle of the last century until now?

"2) Man is causing/contributing greatly to this." - Must know what you mean by cause or contributing greatly in order to answer this. Please specify what portion of the rise, precise or within a range, is directly attributable to CO2 emissions (that is the issue of the day) and what the other specific portions of the rise are attributable to each of the other factors, if any, that play a role in warming.

---

If he says that on both counts scientists don't know, then he is honest and you are done. If he sidesteps and fires back again with 'everyone who is anyone agrees...' then I would ignore him until he can put to words and numbers what it is that he is alleging.

By Viscount Monckton of BrenchleyThe President of the United States recently told the United Nations that "global warming" poses a threat to national security and may engender conflicts as populations are displaced by rising sea levels, droughts, floods, storms etc. etc. etc. However, it is now clear that there is no basis for the notion that the barely-detectable human influence on the climate is likely to prove a threat to climate, still less to national security.

The first principle to which any national security advisor must adhere is that of objective truth. Though he must have an understanding of politics, he is not a politician: he is a truth-bearer. Therefore, he begins by narrowing down the issue to a single, central question whose answer determines whether the suggested threat is real. He then tries to find the truthful answer to that question, and draws his conclusion from that.

Quid enim est veritas? What, then, is the truth? The single question whose answer gives us the truth about the climate question is this: By how much will any given proportionate increase in CO2 concentration warm the world? We now know the answer. The oceans, which must store 80-90% of all heat-energy accumulated in the atmosphere as a result of the radiative imbalance caused by greater greenhouse-gas concentration, have shown no net accumulation of heat for almost 70 years, implying a very small influence of CO2 on temperature (Douglass & Knox, 2009). The devastating analysis of cloud-albedo effects shortly to be published by Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville will show that the UN has wrongly decided that cloud changes reinforce greenhouse warming, when in fact they substantially offset it. Repeated studies of the tropical upper troposphere (e.g. Douglass et al., 2008) show that it is failing to warm at thrice the surface rate as required by all of the UN's models, again implying very low climate sensitivity. The clincher is Professor Richard Lindzen's meticulous recent paper demonstrating - by direct measurement - that the amount of radiation escaping from the Earth's atmosphere to space is many times greater than the UN's models are all told to believe. From this, the world's most formidable atmospheric physicist has calculated that a doubling of CO2 concentration, expected over the next 150 years, would cause 0.75 C (1.5 F) of warming, at most: not the 3.4 C (6 F) that the UN takes as its central estimate.

Most analysts would stop there. Yet some might ask, "Suppose that the single satellite on which Lindzen's results depend is defective. What then?" They might consider the economic cost of attempting to mitigate the "global warming" which, as our Monthly Reports demonstrate, is not actually happening. The figures turn out to be startlingly simple. To mitigate just 1 C (2 F) of warming, one must forego the emission of 2 trillion tons of CO2. The world emits just 30 billion tons a year. So the analyst, as a thought-experiment, would shut down the entire world economy, emitting no CO2 at all. Even then, and even on the incorrect assumption that the UN's exaggerated projections of the effect of CO2 on temperature are correct, it would take 67 years to mitigate 1 C warming. Preventing the 3.4 C (6 F) warming that the UN's climate panel thinks would occur in 100 years would take 225 years without any transportation, and with practically no electrical energy. The national security advisor would at that point advise his head of government that there has never been any security threat less grave, or more expensive to prevent, than the non-problem that is "global warming". It is the fearmongers that are the real national security threat.

Freki - I wanted to add the names Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT and Dr. Roy Spencer, climate change research scientist for the Univ. of Alabama Huntsville to your list as sensible minds on the subject with ample qcredentials, but they are already both quoted in BBG's last post. I'm sure the alarmist is aware of their work and has left wing hate site dirt ready to smear them personally rather than address their scientific studies.

The idea that the coal industry for example, as it is directly threatened with tax and regulatory extinction, should not be funding any scientific atmospheric research regarding the result of their process is antithetical to the founding concept of freedom.

Doug hit the nail on the head, any scientist who does not adhere to the AGW party line is quickly branded a tool of big energy; no anecdotal association is too minor to hyperventilate about. Which ought to be a fatal move on the AGWer's part as every AGW scientist I am aware of is very beholden to research money and the peer review structure that all tend to lead a singular, panic mongering, direction.

Jonathan David Carson, PhD"What Happened to Global Warming?" asks Science, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in its October 2, 2009, issue, before immediately answering, "Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit." By a "bit," AAAS means a "few years."

The "blogosphere," it seems, "has been having a field day with global warming's apparent decade-long stagnation." The world is supposed to sign a global warming agreement in a few years less than a bit, in Copenhagen in December, to be exact, but "What's the point, bloggers ask?"

So global warming skeptics are "bloggers." Here are a few of these bloggers:

· S. Fred Singer--first Director of the National Weather Satellite Service and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia

· Dr. David Bromwich--President of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology

· Dr. Antonino Zichichi--one of the world's foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society

· Prof. Freeman Dyson-- another of the world's foremost physicists

· Prof. Tom V. Segalstad--head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo

· Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu--founding director of the International Arctic Research Center

· Dr. Claude Allegre--member, United States National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science

· Dr. Richard Lindzen--Professor of Meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate

· Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov--head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometria Project

· Dr. Richard Tol--principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carnegie Mellon University

· Dr. Sami Solanki--director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany

· Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen--director of the Danish National Space Centre, Vice-President of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy

· Dr. Edward Wegman--former Chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences

For a less incomplete list of bloggers, see The Deniers by Lawrence Solomon. Another list can be found here. A list of 31,000 scientist-bloggers can be found here.

"Climate researchers" do not deign to answer back in the blogosphere, according to AAAS, preferring instead to reply "in their preferred venue, the peer-reviewed literature": "The pause in warming is real enough, but it's just temporary, they are argue from their analyses. A natural swing in climate to the cool side has been holding greenhouse warming back, and such swings don't last forever."

After pretending that global warming skeptics are bloggers, not scientists, and that their home is the blogosphere, not the peer-reviewed literature, AAAS attributes the more-than-decade-long failure of the globe to warm to a "natural swing in climate." In other words, when the climate warms, it is as a result of anthropogenic causes, but when it cools or fails to warm, it is as a result of natural causes. Increases of temperature are human-caused. Decreases are nature-caused.

Skeptics have been saying for decades that the warming from about 1978 to 1998, which was after all only 0.40C, was probably due to natural causes; now AAAS says that the flat or downward trend since 1998 is due to natural causes, which had nothing to do with the rise between 1978 and 1998. They told us that the temperature of the earth would continue to rise, and when it did not, they said, see, our critics were wrong.

People who argue this way are not scientists, but lawyers with a bad case.

This is the email (not by me but my brother who is fronting this debate, he got me into this )sent to the government teacher we'll call him GT. I will post his responses when they occur. ==========================================Okay, when I have time over the next few days I will look into thisissue of global warming and the articles and science data that is outthere. I have not done this before and think it will be veryenlightening. I will say up front again that it makes sense to melogically that man is having an effect on the earth's temperature, butto what degree? Hopefully our discussion will shed some light. Brentmentions that there is a correlation with a rise of CO2 withtemperature, but it seems to be pretty small, averaging .02 degrees ayear based on the numbers he emailed (not sure where they come from orwhat they are based on) over the last 58 years. I think he will behelpful to look at some of the data and articles I am currentlyreviewing.

Before we start, we need to clarify a couple of the parameters of yourchallenge.

1) The average temperature of the earth is rising." - Let's clarify sowe know what we are agreeing on here. What is the rise (very exact orwithin a specific range) since say the middle of the last century untilnow? How far back are you stating the rise has occurred? 58 yearsabove as Brent states, earlier, what?

2) Man is causing/contributing greatly to this. - I would like to knowwhat you mean by cause or contributing greatly in order to answer this.Please specify what portion of the rise, precise or within a range, isdirectly attributable to CO2 emissions (that is the issue of the day)and what the other specific portions of the rise are attributable toeach of the other factors, if any, that play a role in global warming.I assume you know this information.

Finally, you have not answered a previous request I had as to how youdetermine what scientist is paid or funded by what industry if any? Itcan go both ways, those that are studies funded by funds from the energyindustry as well as those from the so called green industry. This wouldbe helpful to know how you determined this as I review articles on theinternet.

Thanks and looking forward to an honest discussion. Hope to find somenon-biased articles and data out there.

GT's responce 1 The biggest global warming study on earth isbeing done by the ICPP. It is comprised of hundreds if not thousands ofscientists. While some of them might have some secret agenda ( I doubtit) to prove global warming is man made, these are scientists whosemotivation in life is to understand phenomenon. Do you believe thatevolution is driven by ideology or science? What about geology? Whatabout computer science? Are these ideologically driven sciences or arepeople just trying to explain the physical world around us?So in order for the ICPP report to conclude that man is responsible forglobal warming, that would mean that thousands of scientists are in somelarge secret conspiracy to lie to us, because they are.... what? Mad athuman beings? Mad at coal companies? Do you believe thousands of PhDclimatologists are out to destory oil companies because of somephilosophical objections to cars? Occums Razor. A) There is a global wide conspiracy among scientists to destory energycompanies for reasons unknown. B) The science is legit and they are just trying to get to the truth ofwhy the average temperature of the earth is rising.

Craig - Any time I do research I generally go online and try to find outwhat I can about the author of the piece. There are many websitesdedicated to just keep track of who is paying people to do research orlobby. A good one is www.sourcewatch.comFrequently I will get a "hit" on a webpage with some bio of the author.Then from there you learn about organizations and jobs that they haveheld in the past. From there I start googling these organizations orcorporations and keep following the information all the way to theoriginal source. Lots of the scientists have their own webpages. And itis quite easy to see who is funding their research. HypotheticalExample.

John doe - works for The Patriot Corporation - funded solely by BobMcDoe - who owns Global Research Associaties - whose only client isExxon. Then you can go look up all the employees of Global ResearchAssociates and find out who they are and who pays them. And when itcomes to global warming deniers it always goes back to energy companies,generally the coal industry followed by the oil industry.

==============================================================Brothers email backAs to global warming discussion, thanks for the website, that should behelpful. I don't want to get off topic with you as to the challenge youmade. So please respond to my previous email and we can get going. Asfor the discussion about agenda and bias of the scientists (especiallyfrom coal and oil backed industry) , I think that is part of thediscussion but not everything. First I want to look at the science anddata, so answer the questions I had to you in the last email. Second,remember, if so called "industry shills" produce science that is taintedby money that should then be ignored, that would also apply to thosescientist funded by the pro global warming side. To think that there isonly one group out there with an agenda willing to bend statistics andfound data is naive. Again, the bias of who is funding the study isimportant, but I think it is best to set the parameters of thediscussion like you said. Get back to me on that, we will look at thedata and the science and go from there.

BTW, Scott sent me a good quote yesterday from Thomas Jefferson.

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man whoreads nothing but newspapers."

Goes to the bias in journalism that seems to permeate all ourdiscussions.

Here is the wiki page about the ICPP. The way they do the research isthey outsource the projects and data to a collection of thousands of PhDresearchers mostly at universities but also places like NASA, NationalScience Foundation, etc. So all these individual scientists are runningoff and performing scientific experiments. Then after a lenghty peerreview process, where other scientists double check your data andactually repeat your experiment, they determine which data is legit andwhich was unable to be reproduced etc. Then the ICPP complies all ofthis data into reports that come out about every 3-5 years. The next oneis scheduled to be released in 2014 I believe. So again, in order for the data to be biased it would mean thatthousands of scientists all over the globe are in on it. There is some critique of the process and you can read about it on thepage I linked. There have been 2-3 prominant scientists felt the reportwas not accurate.

2) You can pick the years. There are average global temperatures that goback thousands of years but they are based on geological inference anddata. Once man started recording temps and recording. Man was recordingglobal temps fairly early on, but they were not recording temperaturesat the poles and arctic/desert regions consistantly until about the1970's. Thus from the 1970's on we have the most accurate information.But in terms of determining if man is responsible for global warming -the trend is to look at temperatures from the beginning of theindustrial revolution.

So in answer to your question... you pick the years. The average tempgoing up is not in debate any longer, it is 100% conclusive that it isrising. The most important factor is what is causing it. So I recommend youfocus on that research. So you need to look up all the possible causes then start sortingthrough the data and arrive at which explanation is the most accurateand consistant.

Most of the IPCC findings have been written by UN bureaucrats rather than thousands of scientists, while scientists who object to the sweeping statements in various reports don't find their objections noted in IPCC reports. Seeing how other UN panels frequently support all manner of thugs, criminals, and dictators, this should not come as a surprise. Further, the IPCC report is not peer reviewed in any normal sense so really shouldn't have the weight of peer reviewed publications.

As for claims that thousands of scientists would all have to be in someone's pocket, I'd argue that governments is in the business of governing. Nothing gives government more license to govern than a crisis. Government hence underwrites those who predict doom that requires government intervention by awarding them research funds to produce studies supporting that take, while people who point out that surrendering huge chunks of the economy to government control that will unlikely have much public benefit are less likely to get government funding to do that research with.

Freki, People like that are fun to discuss science with. Besides counting scientists, I particularly like the way he condescends, as if you weren't able to google without some steering. Seriously I like the way you don't show all your cards. Just within the discussions here is enough material to rip the report to shreds, but that's not the way to begin.

He starts his IPCC point saying with hundreds if not thousands presumably support him and closes saying it's thousands. Guess that sounded bigger. But he didn't even try to quantify what the scientists are saying, even though you asked very specifically. If he thinks only one or two 'prominant' scientists have a question then you have already done more research than him.

He did say, you pick the time frame - you already did. Then he wants to steer you past the 70s because of inaccurate data but the two decades without warming coming into the 70s led to the Time Magazine headline warning us of the danger of a new ICE AGE: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html. This of course was the consensus of the best scientists and most accurate information available. He says the measurements weren't accurate then, and they aren't accurate now either, but I wouldn't go there. Just look for the data. Also he would like to steer you away from 2008-2009 because that indicates another decade, since 1998, without warming that NONE of the models of the greatest scientists in the world could explain or predict.

But since he says you pick the time frame and you did, middle of the last century until and including 2009. I would re-iterate the 2 questions already posed and if he prefers that you just do your own research, you can easily delay, read the IPCC study, note that the answers aren't in there in spite of thousands of scientists checking and double-checking each other's work and agreeing with each other - qualitatively - that man's impact is large and something must be done.

You have clearly won the debate over bias and I would accept your victory silently and drop it. If a scientist would not tilt his view or his emphasis over funding then same obviously applies for scientists with 'other' funding, or vice versa. What he doesn't see is that even if 90% agree with today's conventional wisdom and 10% don't, nothing inherent in the science tells us which group has it right. History includes plenty of examples of when the consensus was mistaken, see Time magazine 1974 regarding global cooling or anything in the last two centuries that pertains to quantum entanglement.

BTW, IPCC doesn't publish measured temperatures from anywhere. They run their analysis on data that has been adjusted by ever-changing, unpublished 'correction' algorithms. What is the margin of error? They don't say.

As soon as you can pin him down on an alarming amount of continuous and accelerating, measured warming and that human causes are the main cause, say at least a third or a half of that, then his alleged consensus of scientists will quickly disappear, I predict.

(note there has been a lot of back and forth but nothing worth posting till this.)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------GT5. The crux of the argument so far seems to be how do you measure whatmankind's CO2 impact is versus the CO2 from natural conditions on theplanet (cow fart, calcite deposits being released, volcanic activity,etc.) Bryan what is the response you have to this? I think it seemsperfectly logical for Newt Gingrich on the debate with Al Gore toconcede points 1 and 2 of your challenge (I have not yet) and stillstand by the statement that mankind is not CAUSING global warming. Itseems likely there is contribution by mankind (almost certainly), buthow do we know how much?

1) I have a question: I always bold your comments to which I amresponding, are they showing up as bold when you receive them?

2) Newt Gingrich said man IS causing global warming. He says the debateshould be about how to fix it, and is not debating that man is notresponsible anymore. He did a lot of research prior to his debate withGore and couldn't find a way to refute premise 1 and 2. (last refresherpremise 1 = earth is warming premise 2 = man is responsible)

3) Maybe brent can tell us how they measure the sources of CO2. I am notsure how they figured it out, but I know they claim they did figure itout and thats why they said they are 95% certain man is responsible.

----------------------------------------------------------------Brother1. No they are not. Email is a funny thing, I always have problemswhen I try to change font color etc..

2. Okay, I have no idea what Newt said (I was not aware of the debateand have not looked it up), but looking so far at the evidence I haveseen and listening to Brent, I stand by my point. One can concede point1 and state that man contributes to global warming and still stand bythe statement that man does not cause global warming.

3. I will say that I don't think anyone is measuring those sources norcan they likely easily do so. I think this is one of the major problemswith the global warming debate No good data collection to make a goodscientific conclusion. Ask Brent, but I think you lose the challenge onthis point right here. Not to mention the fact Brent mentioned aboutthe Carbon Cycle. 150 years for CO2. Let me know what you say to this,I think you need to do some research on this as to what other sources onearth do to produce CO2.

By the way, I have comments as to the ICPP article you quoted but wantto take one thing at a time. Lets get past the point 3 below and we cantouch on that if need be. I am still waiting for Brent to respond tothe questions I posed to him yesterday as well. -----------------------------------------------------------Geologist

Here is an article you might find interesting with some new CO2production data.

If you want to check real time data and data from I think 200 topresent, NOAA has a good site for understanding how data is taken,pre-processed and displayed. You really have to look at the ACTUAL dataand look at the simulated model data that's is extrapolated from it. Itrust only the real data, the simulated stuff can be anything someonewants to program there and breakdown statistically. This is the site Iuse for my greenhouse gas project in Earth Science meteorology section.

Go here and look at other links at their home site, they have goodcarbon maps too, but still keep in mind simulated information.

1. the temperature is rising slowly. It does get cooler and warmer fromyear to year, month to month, season to season, the increase is slopeaverage of all that data.

2. There are many CO2 producers, animals plants, dead animals, methanein ice, or seabed, volcanoes degassing, etc. The rise in CO2 since the1800's is attributed to Humans more so than anything else because weknow we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere and the math of CO2 tonnageas it equates to rise in CO2 concentrations seems to be fairly close.(Has there been an increase in natural sources? Don't know, not measuredor observed in the detail that industrial/fossil fuel CO2 production hasbeen).

3. Sometimes CO2 rise doesn't equal Temperature rise, sometimes CO2decrease doesn't mean Temperature decrease. I think with thosemeasurements there are the other factors like reflection of solarenergy, conductance of land surface versus ocean surface, changes inwater currents, eruptions that block solar radiation, a dust storm thathas a nuclear winter effect, there can be lots of cases wheretemperature can change regardless of what CO2 is doing. Though to be aglobal factor, it would have to be far reaching and significant event tobe long term effecting.

4. This is true, we wont feel the effects of our CO2 production for 140years. What we see now in the rise of CO2 is largely industrializationeffect of the 19th-20th century efforts. NOAA people think that if westop now, CO2 will get up to 550-600pm before declining (from todayspresent 385 level). We are shortsighted, and not likely to feel verysuccessful if we cut off CO2 emissions and nothing happens, except CO2continues to increase.

5. We definitely contribute, not even worth discussing. Measurements ofstuff we observe can be equated to fossil fuel production. We will haveto identify all the major CO2 producing natural sources and figure out away to extrapolate that data before we can determine what proportion ofthe whole is human contribution.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

BrotherAs Brent just indicated, obviously we contribute to CO2 (I agree), butto say that man is causing global warming, seems to me there are othersources out there that contribute to it as well, have those levels beentested, what puts out more? The challenge was that we are the #1effect, that we greatly contribute. How does solar radiation impactglobal warming? These are questions that I pose to you. I will lookthrough the IPCC report, I have already been looking through it.

As for the methods of collection and the analysis related thereto, checkout these articles that discuss the tactics of data collection andanalysis of the IPCC.

There are several complaints from scientist stating their reports wereedited! Several scientist disagree with the conclusions even thoughthey contributed data..editing again?

All this being said, I would like to know what percentage of the worldsoverall CO2 emissions and heating of the earth is related to man. Thereare the cows and deer, the methane sea beds, the solar radiation, thevolcanoes, and whatever else. Bryan indicates man is no smaller than95% of it. Show me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

GTCraig said:3. I will say that I don't think anyone is measuring those sources norcan they likely easily do so. I think this is one of the major problemswith the global warming debate No good data collection to make a goodscientific conclusion. Ask Brent, but I think you lose the challenge onthis point right here. Not to mention the fact Brent mentioned aboutthe Carbon Cycle. 150 years for CO2. Let me know what you say to this,I think you need to do some research on this as to what other sources onearth do to produce CO2.

It is thousands of pages long in painstaking detail to describe andexplain how exactly they gathered their data, and includes moreimportantly how they are testing human created sources of CO2 versusnatural occuring production. The methodology looks at the entirecomposition of the atmosphere and what chemicals and particles arepresent, how they affect the temperature, and how they are changing.

It includes charts, graphs, and data and dumbs it all down so that wecan understand it. Then if your trying to disprove it, you can juststart making searches for claims made in the FAQ and finding criticism.

If you really want to delve into the science you might have the time toread though the thousands of pages describing methodology and thenfinding criticisms of such. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

GT

I guess Americanthinker is one of those amateur groups you were talkingabout. You realize they are an openly biased non-scientific group ofconservatives right?Here is todays scientific headline:Is Obama Turning Us into the Next Evil Empire?

They also were in on the "Obama is not a citizen" and did a lot of'research' through Illuminati Productions to 'research' that Obama wasnot born in the USA.

This is a website 100% dedicated to arguing against liberals and forconservatives. Perhaps you could link their source material so we canexamine their methodology.

The Cato institute, which I read from time to time and like to see theirside of the story.. It is 100% owned and funded by Kosh Industries. I will bet you can'tguess what they do...Kosh industries holds the record for the largest penalty ever paid forviolating environmental regulations.

Cato also got famous in the 90's for printing lots of research aboutcigarettes are not harmful.. so smoke up!-------------------------------------------------------------------------Brother

Let me know your answer to the question I posed to you, or are youneeding to research it. You might, even though you say you haveresearched this topic extensively. Also, let me know what you think ofthe article on solar cycles. Thanks.------------------------------------------------------------------------Gt

I noticed that it was an article trying to refute the hockey stick graph.

The major counter example of why it was bogus was the study by Moberg A, Sonechkin DM, Holmgren K, Datsenko NM, Karlén W

I am looking for info on them, and currently they seem to be biomedical experts. They obtained their temperatures by looking at ice core samples from Greenland.

Maybe Brent can make more sense of their methodology.

I also noted the article was using Steven McIntyre as their main source. He has a bachlors degree so I guess he qualifies as your Amateur scientist. His main criticism was of the methodolgoy that produced the hockey stick graph. He has not performed any tests himself, but

seems to be good at finding problems with data he reads.

The IPCC listened to his criticism and in the 4th IPCC report addressed his concerns in chapter 6 of the Physical Science

Basis group. They said that while the methodology had some theoretical componants to it, any mistakes or guesstimations had

a very minor impact on the initial report.

Maybe Brent knows more about this as well.--------------------------------------------------------------------------gtPage 268 of

Good job of looking at that, I will take a look at what you have here.

I would like to know what percentage of the worlds overall CO2 emissions and heating of the earth is related to man. There

are the cows and deer, the methane sea beds, the solar radiation, the volcanoes, and whatever else. Bryan indicates man is

no smaller than 95% of it. Show me. --------------------------------------------------------

GtI am not sure what your question is. Also you misrepresented what I said. The ICPP says they are 95% certainthat man is responsible for the increased temperatures. They don't givea % that man is responsible. So its not "man is responsible for 95%" ofthe increase, its man is responsible for the increase and they are 95%certain of that.

Still need to read the solar cycles thing, but I know it has alreadybeen refuted so it shouldn't be hard to find again. ------------------------------------------------------------------BrotherLet me reiterate the points that you started with. You said man is the#1 cause of global warming. I am saying and Brent has indicated thereare many sources for the heating of the earth. I want to know from youor a source you know of that shows the percentage of man compared tothese other sources of contribution and cause. Is man producing 20% ofthe overall CO2 released into the earth that is causing globaltemperatures to rise, is it 95%? Do CO2 emission cause 80% of theglobal heating and solar cycles cause the remaining 20%. If there is noevidence or breakdown then I think that is a big gap in the scientificdata as to how much impact man has. Do you understand the question, Ithought I was being clear. My guess is there is no way to tell andthus there is a big gap in the data that leads us only to be able tospeculate.------------------------------------------------------------------GeologistThere isn't any problem with the hockey stick, you can take the data yourself and plot it up and derive the same curves from

the data. The issue that the conservative group illustrates is, again, the natural cooling and warming through history (see

the dryas_event jpg I attached).

The article didn't say it exactly, because they want you to be convinced that the data is somehow wrong. What the scientists

had a problem with was the predictive model (based on the real data). The hockey-stick predictive model has CO2 and temp.

skyrocketing, and if the predictive model parameters are flawed, then the prediction is non-sense. I would ignore all

predictive rhetoric (from either side of the argument).

He sent along some good graphs but not sure how to get them to show. I have no place to upload them to, so if you would like them message me and I will email them to you. They are on temp change over the last 2000 years and the dryes event.

From information I trust, CO2 has increased 38% since pre-industrialtimes. I think that caps human involvement. Of that 38%, about 20% of ithas been in the last 30 years or so. There's no way to tell what thenatural contribution to that increase was (or maybe natural CO2 is downand human contribution is higher?), I'd like Bryan to find it, because Ihaven't found any good quantitative info. Just qualitative stuff, likeseabed methane here!, coal bed methane there!, but no numbers, volumes%'s on a global scale.

They said:The latter show that human-induced changes in ozone and well-mixed greenhouse gases account for ∼80% of the simulated rise in tropopause height over 1979-1999.

It is on a more specific topic than just global warming. Brent will make sense of it.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Geologist

I don’t like the first charts because the group sulfates, they group CO2, they group all of these factors together and lump them as human induced factors, without separating where that CO2 comes from. It makes it appear as an assumption that all CO2 comes from humans.

The article of the troposphere is saying that that layer of the atmosphere is getting thicker and ozone layers in the stratosphere are thinning (something has to get thinner since our atmosphere isn’t growing bigger and bigger). The main reason for growth is greenhouse gases, it doesn’t say which ones, nitrous oxides, sulfates CFC's?, CO2? Some of those, like CFC's and man-made aerosols we can track and definitely say are manmade, the other gases I think they are assuming are man-made, can't really tell with out looking at the data in the actual paper.

Here is an idea, put an isotope or bond a CFC type gas to CO2 from man-made sources and then you'd be able to tell which part is natural or not. (i.e. contaminate the gas). Wonder if anyone has tried that.

[Friend's comment sent to all involved in Debate. I am sure he found this somewhere but not sure where.]

The report was primarily authored by Benjamin Santer, who was accused by the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) in 1996 of purposely altering data in chapter 8 of the IPCC report that would could cast doubt to the influence of man in climate change. Similar claims were made by the Global Climate Coalition (although they are represented by the energy consortium). Santer responded by admitting alterations were made at the behest of governments and non-government organizations, of which he declined to identify by name. The conclusion of Chapter 8, he states, was the same despite purposely removing such phrases of doubt in the evidence at hand leaving only 20% of the chapter to discuss potential doubts. Santer states that the conclusion, "Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited....nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate," was not changed. What he did instead was remove phrases which might encourage a differing interpretation of that conclusion and thus the intended focus of the IPCC report, which shows bias.

A balance of evidence suggests there is a discernible human influence - this is hardly scientific. Allow me to break down this language - A balance means that only a majority (>50% which could be 51%) of available evidence which they admittedly cannot quantify, suggests (not proves, not shows, not makes evident) that there is discernible (again, ambiguous language with no quantification or even estimates) human influence. But somehow that gets morphed into "Humans are causing global warming" by politicians and media. It just seems like such a stretch. Besides that fact that he also freely admits to altering the document at the suggestion of outside non-scientific influences, the team purposely uses ambiguous descriptions because they know it cannot be proven.

The 95% issue is funny to me. If you or your brother misunderstood the meaning of it, that is perfect - because it is designed to be misunderstood, to sound like scientists are alleging something quantifiable. So you confronted him with backing up the idea that a group of scientists believe that humans are causing 95% of the warming. Now the debate falls on its ear. He is trying to explain to you that they never said humans caused 95% of the warming. They just said they are 95% sure (whatever that means) that we caused a lot of it (whatever that means!)... begging the questions you opened with and repeated politely and repeatedly, still not answered - how much warming is there and how much of that did we cause, how do we know, and what is causing the rest of it, in what proportions?

He reverts to calling one site political and noting that another critic has [only a] a bachelor's degree as he leaves all relevant questions unanswered. Why? Because scientists just don't know.

I stumbled into this I think in the 1990s with an NOAA (http://www.noaa.gov/) report with similar alarmist headlines, so I actually went in and read the report. It was loaded with data. But the conclusions weren't borne out in the data; there was a disconnect. The analysis showed a possibility of something but then the conclusions made the liklihood sound stronger. And the headlines and press reports went much further still obviously not written by the scientists collecting the data and writing the analysis. As it went from data to analysis to conclusions to headlines that grab attention, it also went from imperfect science to reckless fiction.

Same goes for the IPCC. Yes they have many scientists. Yes they choose from those who already agree with the cause. Yes they publish thousands of pages. Yes there is CO2 growth. Yes there is warming, at times, though not large, continuous or predictable. Yes the chart looks steep if you choose your time frame carefully, choose and tweak your data, and work with the scale.

First, here is the CO2 increase, viewed honestly. Alarmists HATE this picture. Really, it is the same data they chart, but they chart without a zero base showing in order to make the slope and the increase look alarming:Fifty years increases in Atmospheric CO2 content as measured at Mauna Loa by the NOAAhttp://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Back to the hockey stick, now discredited. It implied that earth temps were stable and predictable until the acceleration of the industrial age and then the temps just went through the roof. Besides the data errors they made, the temperature increases look different with either a shorter or longer view. Here is the time frame he was choosing - since the 1970s:

Look at the cooling cycle now, the warming cycles of the past, the variances on other planets, the resilience of the planet, and what I think is the obvious observation that we won't be hooked on fossil fuels for more than a blip in time in terms of the life of the planet - with or without government intervention. When you look at all of that objectively should we be alarmed now? We are talking about warming over a good part of a century in the tens of a degree. We are calling something a "contaminant" and a danger that we all exhale and that is the lifeblood of all plant life. We are talking about a phenomenon where we know that earth has self-correcting mechanisms, scientists call them negative feedback factors, such as the resulting increase in plant health and growth will consumes a portion of the increased CO2. We are talking about warming where we have little or no understanding about how so many other factors, wind, clouds and sun variances for example - factor in And we are talking about a temporary fuel source.

Referring back to the alarming CO2 chart with a 38% increase (worth showing again)I would be more 'alarmed' if the levels of this life essential molecule, that still comprises less than one half of one tenth of a percent of atmospheric content, were decreasing!

By James R. FencilEarth operates a network of molten upwellings from deep seams in the planet's crust which act to shove tectonic plates across the seafloors where these plates bump into continental land outcroppings. There the spreading plates subduct beneath the continental rims and simultaneously thrust mountains upward from sea level. Such crustal movements continue to alter our global topography today. Atmospheric composition is largely unaffected by these tectonic movements except during volcanic eruptions which emit gasses that are subsequently diffused about the globe by wind action.

Space operates a system of radiant inputs to the earth: both continuous cosmic rays from deep space and variable solar rays from our nearby sun. From time to time the sun produces solar winds having magnetic effects that perturb the incoming cosmic rays causing them to vary in intensity. The primary solar rays vary also but to a lesser extent than the solar-perturbed cosmic rays. Atmospheric composition is largely unaffected by these radiant inputs but one component of the atmosphere undergoes reversible change-of-state to an extent that is dependent on the intensity of the incoming cosmic rays. This component is water.

Water evaporates from the earth's surface as a clear vapor. Each water vapor molecule has a diameter of 1.5 angstroms. Incoming solar radiation contains wavelengths ranging from 1000 angstroms to 10,000,000 angstroms. Much of this incoming solar radiation passes over and through the clear water vapor, warming it in transit and continuing downward to the earth where it proceeds to warm the planet's surface. The cosmic rays, erratically constrained by the solar winds, convert some portion of the clear water vapor to liquid droplets ranging in size from 20,000 to 400,000 angstroms. Incoming solar radiation cannot pass readily through these large droplets and instead is scattered and partially redirected back into space. So incoming solar radiation can be either absorbed and transmitted (as with clear water vapor) or scattered and reflected (as with cloud droplets.) When the sun permits the cosmic rays to do their job of forming clouds then the planet will be cooled. When the solar winds withhold enough of the cosmic rays to restrain cloud formation then the planet will be warmed.

Down at the earth's surface water mediates life's processes. In watered terrestrial regions gaseous carbon feeds photosynthesis-powered carbon chain growth as life converts CO2 into solid carbonaceous plant matter, with some reoxidized to CO2 and some buried. In coastal shallows life additionally converts CO2 into the solid CaCO3 component of animal matter, with some redissolved and dissociated and some buried. These active life zones act as CO2 sinks, depleting the local atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and drawing additional CO2 from the diminishing reserves elsewhere in the atmosphere.

The accumulated solidified carbon products are then transported by tectonic movements and are either pushed upward into mountainous formations or dragged downward beneath the surface to be heated and pressure-cooked into pockets of fossil fuels. In either case the life-formed carbon-rich solid matter is carried away from the wet biologically active zones into locations where life processes are arrested and the carbon is forcibly sequestered.

Over time the earth has seen gaseous CO2 levels fall from the original 0.80% to our current 0.04%. Photosynthesis has been busily productive but the relentless tectonic conveyances have carried away and stored life's solidified carbon-containing products, leaving them in limitedly accessible locations awaiting mankind's efforts to disinter some fraction of these vast stores to use as fossil fuels and thus to regenerate CO2. The assertion that neither the mammoth tectonic mechanism nor the immense space radiant mechanism is overawed by either life's maladaptive CO2 burials or by mankind's trifling energy use is surely one of the greater understatements of all time. These primordial earth/space processes acted to warm and to cool the planet and to rearrange its surface features long before life began and they will continue to perform their accustomed activities long after life completes its self-extinguishing sojourn.

Since controversies abound in this matter you may consult: Goethe Universitat-Cloud ITN; Journal of Geophysical Research-Vol.110-Nir J Shariv; and the CERN Cloud Project. Expect to witness increasingly rational parsing of the relative importance of all the change agents intrinsic to this geophysical system. But however continuing research evolves we can already confidently state that the baseless claims of the CO2 is a pollutant crowd are insupportable on their face in light of the indisputable evidence of life having flourished throughout a 95% decline in atmospheric CO2 concentrations as documented in the scientific record. Disaffected humans will just have to find something else with which to flagellate themselves and their betters. We can take comfort however in the knowledge that their need is great, their determination unabashed and their perverse imaginations sufficient to the task.

James R. Fencil is the technical director of a Midwestern corporation, and an alumni scholar at the U. of C. Graham School in Chicago.

I remember several science channel shows that aired before the whole Climate change/ Global warming thing became politicised. One talked about how earth had totally iced over, not Ice Age, but snowball. They figured that volcanoes releasing carbon are the mechanism that finally broke the chill. The dark volcanic ash on the ice helped some too, but the carbon was the main ticket.

Another show was talking about the Greenland Ice core project and how they were using it to map global temperature changes. The scale was in 100's of thousands of years. I remember a graph quite clearly that looked like a snake squirming all over the places, up until the end of the last Ice Age 9000?years ago, and the Lesser Dryas about 3000 years later. So the last coldness left the planet about 1000years before Egypt was beginning to organize into something more than a bunch of villages. would you believe that starting about 4000 years ago that snake settled down? about the time several human civilizations were developing across the planet. The Peru/ Chilean civilizations that were building Pyramids and UFO readable art, Egypt with its monument building, the Africans with the Benin and Zimbabwean centers. It looks like a lot of carbon from wood fires was hitting the atmosphere and starting to mellow out the freeze thaw cycle? There were still vestiges of it tho'. look at the documented harsh winters in Europe during the middle ages after a warming period. There is similar indications with the Ananzi, and may be what impacted Teotihuacan in the Americas.

I think climate change is normal, and that humanity with time may influence this change, but to take ALL the credit for it is simply arrogant. I believe that we do need to pick better- more efficient ways of generating our energy. Not because of global warming, but because we can, because oil while vast, is finite (we are using it faster that it is made, if it regenerates), and because we do not understand what the carbon and other chemicals are doing. (cattle methane, freon and others) Until we do it would be wise to go slower or be cautious about what we dump into the air, because we may have a big influence.

regardless of where exactly you wish to stand on the debate, striving for understanding is a good thing. Moderating what may be a bad thing, until knowledge is really gained, is wise.

Climate feedback assumptions in all the UN IPCC models are proven false by actual data.Peer reviewed, published study by credentialed scientists from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at M.I.T. Good luck to the debate partners in refuting the data. May I predict their reaction will be to personally smear the authors...

Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in theoutgoing radiation budget from the latest version of EarthRadiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data.It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoingradiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surfacetemperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiationfluxes implies negative feedback processes associated withrelatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite ofthe behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the sameSSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climatesensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult topin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Resultsalso show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwaveradiation while the feedback in the models is mostly fromlongwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguishthe mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency ofclimate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problemin climate prediction. Citation: Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S.Choi (2009), On the determination of climate feedbacks fromERBE data

Words like Implies, and Fundamental Problem show me that we are still trying to figure it out. This shows a "warming" model does not match observed data, it also indicates a lot of issues with data gathering as well. That was a lot of reading to verify "we still don't know".

The personal smears are what I hate, if you have observed/measured info that says your idea is wrong, you go figure out where your reasoning went wrong, or get more data or do new tests to find out if the data that proves you wrong. That is what I hate about the politicization of this stuff.

Until this, I hadn't read anything critical about China's new PR campaign and the American Obamagasm over it that China will soon lead the world in green-everything if we don't get our coercive-big-government act together right now...

China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas on the planet. We burn more carbon per person, but China has more people, and both its population and economy are growing much faster than ours. For many members of Congress, a vote for strict carbon limits will be politically suicidal if constituents continue to believe--correctly--that the vote will propel a massive shift of jobs, wealth and emissions from Peoria to Beijing. So in the coming months watch out for brazenly false claims that China is blazing the green trail, and getting richer by doing so, and that to compete we must outgreen them. China is of course delighted to jigger numbers to help frame the story.

"China attaches great importance to tackling climate change," China's climate commissar recently declared. The Middle Kingdom therefore promises to lower its energy consumption per unit of GDP. Translation: "We promise to get richer." Energy consumption per unit of GDP always falls as a country gets richer. The poorest countries in Africa spend 100% of their GDP on food, the most primitive form of energy. Bill Gates, on the other hand, has the lowest energy consumption per unit of household GDP on the planet. Carbon emissions per unit of GDP follow the same trajectory. China's are about twice as high as ours, Africa's three times as high. The global climate, however, doesn't care a fig about hyphenated emissions, whether per capita, per dollar or per unit of sly political prevarication.

"China also sets an objective of increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the primary energy mix to 10% by 2010, and to 15% by 2020." Translation: "We'll keep on burning the stuff that poor people burn until we get rich." Biomass accounts for 10% of the global energy supply but less than 4% in the developed world and closer to 2% in the U.S. The poor always burn more carbohydrates, fewer hydrocarbons. Calling something "renewable" doesn't mean that it saves carbon. Agriculture, forestry and deforestation already cost the planet more than twice as much in carbon equivalents as transportation--over 30% of all emissions. Since nobody can track how many twigs, cowpats and rice husks a billion peasants burn--or alternatively, leave to fungi to convert into methane, a powerful greenhouse gas--China's carbon accountants can make its renewable numbers come out anywhere they like.

China is proud to report that it has been shutting down "small thermal power-generation units." Translation: "We're replacing diesel generators with big coal-fired power plants." Big, central power plants burn much cheaper fuel much more efficiently, and therefore generate much cheaper power, and therefore boost energy consumption, emissions and GDP even faster.

China touts its new wind, hydroelectric and nuclear capacity. Translation: "China's energy policy is--and will remain--solidly anchored in coal." The word "capacity" next to "wind" misleads by a factor of five or so, because much of the time the wind doesn't blow. China's nuclear plants and its gargantuan hydroelectric dams will indeed make a real dent in the carbon intensity of its energy supply. But mushrooming coal consumption will utterly swamp the savings for as long as anyone can possibly foresee.

China says it "has increased its carbon sinks by promoting reforestation." Translation: "Your sinks don't count." North America has been reforesting since 1920, and continues to do so. So fast, in fact, that we're currently sucking about two-thirds of our carbon emissions back into our forests and soil. Europe and Japan hate all such talk, at least when it's America that's talking, because we have lots of land to reforest and they don't. U.S. greens do their best not to talk about it too, because--well, it gets in the way of other agendas.

China says because it's poor and we're rich, we must slash our emissions--absolute emissions, not the per-GDP kind--by 25% to 40% in the next decade, and also pay China and other developing countries in both cash and technology transfers to help them curb theirs. Translation: "You're responsible for our sorry past."

Agricultural footprints shrink, forests recover and birth rates decline as people get richer. Our 19th-century birth rates were as high as China's and India's were through most of the 20th. Their huge, impoverished populations reflect economic and political choices that stifled economic growth in their countries during the century when we got rich, stabilized our populations, reforested our land and dispatched would-be global tyrants to the dustbin of history. China, not America, is responsible for the economic and demographic legacies of Puyi, Yuan, Sun, Chiang and Mao.

Peter Huber is a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and coauthor of The Bottomless Well

Sorry for the delay in the email debate. It has come to an abrupt end...not a suprise. We won! at least according to his challange(95% of GW is AGW). He still is not a convert and never will be.

===============================================================GtGTOk in the FAQ I sent you already, on page 9 is a chart of RadiativeForcing. Its FAQ figure 2.1 Figure 2

Immediatly after it defines Radiative forcing - snipet "Radiativeforcing is a measure of how the energy balance of the Earth-atmospheresystem is influenced when factors that affect climate are altered."

The chart shows how much each factor is contributing to this. Inaddition it gives a range of uncertainty "The thin black line attachedto each coloured bar represents the range of uncertainty for therespective value. (Figure adapted from Figure 2.20 of this report.)"

Uncertainty = not deceptive... they are telling us their confidence.

I am going to delve into the actual 1000 page section and see if I canfind the source. -----------------------------------------------------Geologist

I get the feeling something was missed Bryan. The charts show processes/ constituents that lead to (influence) warming / cooling. CO2 is thedominant warming factor, there is only one bar that indicates CO2contribution to the whole and it doesn't discriminate natural or manmadeCO2. That is what Craig wants, discrimination of natural v. manmade CO2in the atmosphere.

A funny observation: Notice on the charts how aerosols (particlessuspended in the air, smoke, dust, ash, etc.) can have a cooling effect.So, fossil fuels and biomass may cool the climate while CO2 emissionswarm the climate at the same time...hmmm-----------------------------------------------------------Gt

The answer is in there. The science level is way over my head. Its 200pages long with the data and methodology. I read things like..."Annual rates of change in the global atmospheric masses of each of themajor LLGHGs expressed in common units of GtC yr-1."

...and I have no idea what I am reading.

I read about ogranic carbons, but then it gets too complicated. I believe the answer to craigs question is somewhere in this data but Idon't have the science jargon to pick it out. I imagine Brent could doit fairly quickly as the 200 pages are well summarized and titled.

------------------------------------------Geologist

IPCC indicates that humans have had a substantial influence in warmingfrom 1750-2005 of 95% confidence (statistical probability). In the paperthey actually say +0.6 to +2.4 with a 90% confidence - seems morereasonable.

They use radiative forcing values to associate contribution of allanthropogenic sources and give humans a total of +1.66 (smoke, farting,driving trucks down dirt roads, clearing forests, breathing, heatinghomes, etc....)

That is broken down into anywhere from +0.27-+0.57 due to land usechanges; +0.72 for carbonaceous particulates; +0.99 for CO2.

+2.63 was the total positive RF provided. So, CO2 represents 63% ofglobal warming influence. The keeling reference in the IPCC indicatesthat CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels and degassing from cementindustry (p. 139) represents 60% of the CO2 fraction.

*Drum roll*

The CO2 that humans contribute to global warming is 37.8%.

--------------------------------------------

GTIt might be timely to calculate, but if you could tell use of theIncreased temps - What total is due to solar, volcanic, and then breakup the CO2 sources and all their values or inputs to increased temp. Because the way you told us CO2 = X percent... is that including manscontribution to methane and more importantly landscape changes thatimpact CO2?

Or basically... find a way to clarify and give us a better understandingof the last statement. (We know craig has reading comprehension issues)

Also, tell us how your job/funding is in jeopardy now because of yourinquiry into this topic. I assume you have received death threats. ---------------------------------------------Geologist

The IPCC report separates CO2 from the other individual gas compoundsand aerosols. The tables breakdown contribution of each aerosol groupand gas group by RF contribution.

The original question was CO2, not smog and smoke and everything elsethat contributes to global warming, or cooling. This first page of thesummary indicates that all anthropogenic factors are 1.6 RF to the wholeof just greenhouse gases of 2.63 RF, so that caps human contributionwithout looking at anything else at 60.8%, any other RF factor is justgoing to make the total RF higher and lessen human % contribution.

Just for grins though:Landscape changes have been calculated to contribute 0.20 to 0.57 RFCO2, but at the same instance reflectance RF calculated from the samechange in landuse was -0.24 to -0.29 for +0.27 CO2, and -0.66 for +0.20CO2, it seems to balance out reflectance cooling for CO2 increase inlanduse change. CO2 contribution is already counted in total CO2 RFchange, but accounts for 12% to almost 35% at the highest extremes ofanthropogenic CO2. It appears IPCC consider landuse at net coolingeffect on climate change.

IPCC indicates past deforestation / landuse change has changedtemperature from .01C to -.25C (p. 185), cooling tends to predominatewith this aspect.------------------------------------------GtSo what % is methane to total RF and what % of methane is due toincreased agriculture (raising cows)------------------------------------------------GtA) 60% of CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels and the constructionindustry.

B) Humans are responsible for 37.8% of CO2, that influences globalwarming.

I think you need to clarify what part A means. If 60% of all CO2 comesfrom burning fossil fuels, how are humans only responsible for 37.8% ofthe CO2 impacting RF. Do fossil fuels burn naturally?----------------------------------------------Geologist

Oh my god, do the math.

63% of ALL global warming is caused by CO2

60% of that CO2 is caused by burning of fossil fuels and theconstruction industry (everything else is ridiculously negligible).

.6 * 63% = 37.8%

Humans are responsible for 37.8% of global warming due to theirproduction of CO2.

Is that better?

Methane: 10-30% estimated CH4 from living vegetation world wide. Thereis an increase and a .48 RF for total nethane, but the cause of growthand sources and sinks aren't understood, ice, coal, seabeds, animals,all produce methane, oil, tar, etc. not enough info. For that from theIPCC.----------------------------------------Brother

I love it. Says I can't comprehend...---------------------------------------------GTI found an even more concise and more recent report from the IPCC.

It also has a section describing all the climate drivers both naturaland manmade. But we have already seen this data. (Solar, volcanic, etc)

(Figure 2.3). The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4 in 2005exceed by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years. Globalincreases in CO2 concentrations are due primarily to fossil fuel use,with land-use change providing another significant but smallercontribution. It is very likely that the observed increase in CH4concentration is predominantly due to agriculture and fossil fuel use.The increase in N2O concentration is primarily due to agriculture. {WGI2.3, 7.3, SPM}---------------------------------------------------BrotherNow he has a new set of data.------------------------------------------GeologistIt's no different from the other report, it's just prettier with someeconomic and more lay aspects. Same numbers and RF values.

Read at the end about the key uncertainties, specifically the land useand methane source sink variables.----------------------------------------BrotherI love it, I love it!

------------------------------------GTThank you.

So you really were looking just at CO2 and not including CH4, N2O, andHalocarbons. So what craig is reading is:Man is only responsible for 37.8%. But you didn't include the 3 other GHG's that man is responsible for. For example:"Many halocarbons (including hydrofluorocarbons) have increased from anear-zero pre-industrial background concentration, primarily due tohuman activities"

and Halocarbons account for .34 RF CH4 accounts for .48 and it is alsomost exclusively man made. Human activities result in emissions of four long-lived GHGs:CO2, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and halocarbons (a group ofgases containing fluorine, chlorine or bromine). Atmosphericconcentrations of GHGs increase when emissions are larger than removalprocesses.

Brent is telling us just about one of those, which happens to be thelargest. Yes his math and conclusions are correct, but he is onlytelling us about the largest factor.

Analogy for Craig:

You got beat up and then try to calculate what % was caused by human(punching, kicking, headlocks)and what % was natural (falling on theground, hitting head on the cement)

So brent told you 37.8% of your wounds came from punching. What he is leaving out is that another 25% came from bites, kicks, andhair pulling.

So you are falsely concluding that 37.8% of my wounds came from a humanand the rest were caused by natural forces.-------------------------------------------------BrotherYou know your losing a debate when you start going to the analogies.Wait, let me look at Wikipedia and see what that is called. --------------------------------------------GTNah analogies = your audience isn't very knowledable and your trying todumb something down for them.--------------------------------------BrotherI think the doctors your talking to can handle it Bryan. Yes, I do havea doctorate. And I think Rick said he has a masters (pretty educatedbunch here). Go punch your numbers until you get the result you want.I will be waiting here to discuss them when you do.---------------------------------------------------GTLets wait and see how Brent responds to my asserting that he was leavingout 3 other GHG's.-----------------------------------------------That is where it all ended!-------------------------------------

Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomicsGlobal warming might be solved with a helium balloon and a few miles of garden hose.By BRET STEPHENS

Suppose for a minute—which is about 59 seconds too long, but that's for another column—that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too, that the best solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.

Good news, right? Maybe, but not if you're Al Gore or one of his little helpers.

The hose-in-the-sky approach to global warming is the brainchild of Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold. The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years.

Could it work? Mr. Myhrvold and his associates think it might, and they're a smart bunch. Also smart are University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, whose delightful "SuperFreakonomics"—the sequel to their runaway 2005 bestseller "Freakonomics"—gives Myhrvold and Co. pride of place in their lengthy chapter on global warming. Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like eruption of their own.

Mr. Gore, for instance, tells Messrs. Levitt and Dubner that the stratospheric sulfur solution is "nuts." Former Clinton administration official Joe Romm, who edits the Climate Progress blog, accuses the authors of "[pushing] global cooling myths" and "sheer illogic." The Union of Concerned Scientists faults the book for its "faulty statistics." Never to be outdone, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman scores "SuperFreakonomics" for "grossly [misrepresenting] other peoples' research, in both climate science and economics."

In fact, Messrs. Levitt and Dubner show every sign of being careful researchers, going so far as to send chapter drafts to their interviewees for comment prior to publication. Nor are they global warming "deniers," insofar as they acknowledge that temperatures have risen by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.

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Associated PressBut when it comes to the religion of global warming—the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion—Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations." They observe that "not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's doomsday scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."

More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to approximately match one another." In other words, the herd-of-independent-minds phenomenon happens to scientists too and isn't the sole province of painters, politicians and news anchors.

But perhaps their biggest sin, which is also the central point of the chapter, is pointing out that seemingly insurmountable problems often have cheap and simple solutions. Hence world hunger was largely conquered not by a massive effort at population control, but by the development of new and sturdier strains of wheat and rice. Hence infection and mortality rates in hospitals declined dramatically as doctors began to appreciate the need to wash their hands.

Hence, too, it may well be that global warming is best tackled with a variety of cheap fixes, if not by pumping SO2 into the stratosphere then perhaps by seeding more clouds over the ocean. Alternatively, as "SuperFreakonomics" suggests, we might be better off doing nothing until the state of technology can catch up to the scope of the problem.

All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who'd much prefer to spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually for the sake of reconceiving civilization as we know it, including not just what we drive or eat but how many children we have. And little wonder: As Newsweek's Stefan Theil points out, "climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades." Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator, wouldn't want a piece of that action?

Part of the genius of Marxism, and a reason for its enduring appeal, is that it fed man's neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing an avenue for moral transcendence. It's just the same with global warming, which is what makes the clear-eyed analysis in "SuperFreakonomics" so timely and important. (Now my sincere apologies to the authors for an endorsement that will surely give their critics another cartridge of ammunition.)

I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called "Endangerment Finding."

It has been often said that the "science is settled" on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a "tipping point." Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output "goes to the rail." Not only that, but it stays there. That's the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASA GISS) and Al Gore.

But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.

Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to global warming.

(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind. The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply assume that it would be the "pre-industrial" value.

The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect. The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?

A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.

The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.

CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.

A warmer world begets more precipitation.

All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.

The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is -14 ºC, and the lowest is -117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that's climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin "proved" that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He "proved" it using the conservation of energy. What he didn't know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.

To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.

First, I second the question: If the science is settled, why are there still multiple climate models? Lol.---------BBG, Freki, all,The last post along with the recent debate reminds there are 2 more legs warming stool in order for fossil fuel use to destroy the planet.

Paraphrasing the first 2 false premises from the global waring debate:

Even if those were true (they aren't), the next 2 must also be true to require government action to avoid our demise:

Premise 3) Net positive feedback, not net-negative feedback. (false) In other words, does the warming lead to more warming in an uncontrolled, accelerating spiral, or is there a net correction mechanism? In fact, the history of the earth and its cycles demonstrates that negative feedback mechanisms prevail. For example, increased CO2 levels cause faster and greater plant growth which in turn consumes more and more CO2 from the atmosphere, aka earth's cycles.

Premise 4) The period of time that humans will power with fossil fuels will be endless until planetary failure in a free economy (false) requiring a giant, coercive government to stop it (false). A better estimate would be that our dependency on fossil fuels is already near it's peak and would actually be shifting faster to cheaper, carbon free sources if not for the plethora of big government mechanisms preventing the buildout of carbon-free nuclear. Even if the transition to new technologies takes 50 years, it is a blip in time in the context of the history of the planet and its ecosystems.

NOAA's review of October temps. Maybe they should take a page out of the climate apocalypse monger who posted the previous month's data twice to prove we are all doomed.

National Overview:Temperature Highlights - OctoberThe average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.

For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation's nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.

Statewide temperatures coincided with the regional values as all but six states had below normal temperatures. Oklahoma had its coolest October on record and ten other states had their top five coolest such months.

Florida was the only state to have an above normal temperature average in October. It was the sixth consecutive month that the Florida's temperature was above normal, resulting in the third warmest such period (May-October).

The three-month period (August-October) was the coolest on record for three states: Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Five other states had top five cool periods: Missouri (2nd), Iowa (3rd) , Arkansas (5th) , Illinois (5th) and South Dakota (5th) . Every climate division in Kansas (nine) and Nebraska (eight) recorded a record cool such period.

For the year-to-date (January - October) period, the contiguous U.S. temperature ranked 43rd warmest. No state had a top or bottom ten temperature value for this period.

(PhysOrg.com) -- New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of CO2 has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of CO2 having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.

So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? “Not necessarily”, says Knorr. “Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed”.

Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published last week in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.

By JOHN M. BRODER and LESLIE KAUFMANThe Environmental Protection Agency has directed two of its lawyers to makes changes to a YouTube video they posted that is critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy.

The agency, citing federal policies, told the two lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, who are married and based in San Francisco, that they could mention their E.P.A. affiliation only once; must remove language specifying Mr. Zabel’s expertise and their years of employment with the agency; and must remove an image of the agency’s office in San Francisco.

They have been told that if they do not edit the video to comply with the policy, they could face disciplinary action.

The video, titled “The Huge Mistake,” was produced and posted in September. But the agency did not issue its warning until The Washington Post published a widely cited opinion article by the couple on Oct. 31 that raised concerns, echoing those in the video, about cap-and-trade legislation that the Obama administration supports.

Ms. Williams and Mr. Zabel say cap and trade, in which the government sets a limit on gases that contribute to global warming and then lets companies trade permits to meet it, can be easily gamed by industry and fail to reduce the emissions linked to global warming.

On Thursday, Mr. Zabel said, regional ethics officers with the agency met with him to express concerns about the video and to demand that it be taken down by the next day. Ms. Williams was traveling and did not take part in the meeting.

E.P.A. officials said the agency did not object to the content of the video or the op-ed article or challenge the couple’s right to express their opinions. But they said that government ethics rules required them to state that the opinions were their own and not those of the agency.

“E.P.A. has nearly 18,000 employees, and all of them are free to — and many do — publicly express their views on issues of the day, including issues that are central to E.P.A.’s mission,” Scott Fulton, the agency’s general counsel, said in a statement. However, the video did say the opinions were those of Mr. Williams and Ms. Zabel and were not meant to represent the agency.

In addition, Mr. Williams and Ms. Zabel say they quickly removed the video from their Web site and YouTube. But they said that others had copied the video and put it up on separate YouTube accounts and that it is still easily found.